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Let’s start something new…farm fact trivia!
True or False? Soybeans are used to make crayons.
Find out at the end of the article!
Here’s what happened on our farm during the month of September!
Chickens went to market so we cleaned out and prepped for a new flock of babies. This included flipping down and blowing out feeders, washing feed hoppers, washing and inspecting all of our fans to close our tunnel fans up for winter ventilation, and litter work. Litter work between flocks this time included windrowing our litter into piles. Windrowing creates a heat and helps mitigate any potential diseases in the litter, flip the windrow piles so it can go through another heat cycle, leveling the piles and pulverizing to make the litter smooth for a new flock of chicks.
October starts us off with a new flock of chicks! This will be flock number 45 for our farm!
During the month of September, harvest prep was underway. This included inspecting our draper head and performing some maintenance on it to ensure a clean cut for soybeans and to help prevent yield loss. A draper head is a head on the combine that cuts small grains such as wheat and barley in the summer and soybeans and sorghum in the fall. Another item on our prep list was inspecting and making adjustments on our corn head to make sure it was ready to go once our corn was ready to pick when it was time.
One of the first steps of fall harvest is calibrating the monitor inside the combine. We need to make sure the monitor is accurately recording the moisture of our beans and the bushels per acre as we harvest. We have to calibrate the monitor again when we start corn harvest because the moisture content and bushels per acre vary among different crops.
Lots of small things going on around the farm this time of year to make the wheels turn! One thing I always notice is the teamwork that goes into fall harvest. Remember to give extra space when you see equipment on the roads, we all want to get to our destinations safely and efficiently!
Did you try out the trivia question above? Here’s the answer-
Soybeans can be used to make crayons so the answer is TRUE! One bushel of crayons can produce enough oil to make over 2,000 crayons. Not all crayons contain soybean oil, but some do!
