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Autumn is traditionally harvest time when
the farmers would cut their crops to prepare them for storage
or to sell. When I was a kid we lived on a dairy farm and this
was always a busy time of year as we cut harvested our crops and
prepared the farm for winter.
Farmers use many pieces of large and small
equipment to take care of their farm. Before winter they make
sure everything is working like it should and they repair anything
that needs it.
A lot of farmers plow their fields in the
fall so it will give them a headstart for the spring. September
is also the time that farmers plant winter wheat. It grows until
it gets cold and then it goes dormant, which means it stops growing,
until spring when it starts growing again.
Most farm animals love corn, but it has
to picked at just the right time so the farmers can have a supply
all winter long. Most corn today is picked with a picker-sheller
or a combine, both machines shell the corn off the cob and then
the farmer dumps it in a gas batch dryer which dries it to a certain
hardness, otherwise it will get moldy in storage.Some farmers
still just pick the whole ear with a regular corn picker and store
it in a corn crib, if they are going to just pick it, they leave
it in the field longer so it will dry. They test the moisture
by shelling the corn off the cob and putting a handful into a
moisture tester.
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