A Ride on a combine harvester

On the road again on Tuesday September 22nd.  

  Ponder - why would someone have a rocket behind their house?

 What is a random bison doing in a car park in Knoxville?...

...a sad reminder that the last bison east of the Mississippi was killed in 1832.

Rural scene along Macombe Rd between Knoxville and Abingdon....



 

All US states are divided up into counties, and the small county roads are generally numbered in rising numbers from east to west and south to north. By and large this makes it easier to identify where one is, but can often be confusing as well. The system can vary between counties and lead to the example below when the road runs along a boundary between two counties, in this case Knox on the right and Warren on the left. They both claim the road using their own numbering systems, which accounts for the plethora of road signs.

Note the 000E road which runs along the boundary, and from which all Knox county N-S roads are numbered in miles east.   In Knox county they use multiples of a hundred and 450N denotes 4.5 miles north. But in Warren county they use multiples of ten, so 180St is 18 miles rather than 1.8miles north.  Added to this you can also see that for Warren county N-S roads are referred to as Streets, and E-W roads as Avenues. But this is not universal.
To demonstrate the confusion this can cause, on my map 180St (otherwise 000E) is called 1800E. And on Google Earth 105 Ave otherwise 450N, is called Knox Rd 465N.  This draws attention to another potential confusion which is that the roads may have a name on the map and not on the sign or vice versa.   Luckily I have my new i-phone with me to double check my actual position!

David Meadows and his mother Beulah, who let me tether Lady behind their shed and use a little caravan where I could keep an eye on her..

David does mobile catering at events, and Beulah fed me and gave me some packets of the superb trail mix they make up to take with me the next day Wednesday September 23rd!

A beautiful Illinois morning....



 I stopped at the friendly little community of Roseville to have a midday bite to eat at The Lunch Box.  I was taken under the wing of Nancy Goosen, who introduced me to everyone, and drove me to do a little shopping, while I found my meal had been paid for by some kind person!

 Betsy Larsen had arranged for me to stay with Sue and Leroy Tappe, who farm about 600acres to the south of Roseville.  Harvesting was in full swing...

 and they were no exception.  Sue suggested I go for a ride on their state of the art combine harvester, an experience not to be missed....

Quite apart from being air-conditioned, these huge green monsters are equipped with the latest technology. Eight or more blades strip the corn from the stems. Metal antennae by the blades sense the rows, so once the harvester is set on course, it can guide itself, leaving Leroy to chat on his mobile phone! A GPS system tracks location, and data such as this is constantly fed into the on board computer so a running record of yield per acre etc can be provided on the monitor in the cab, analysed and compared with other results...

 

Not unsurprisingly these machines can cost over six figures, particularly as each new version becomes bigger and better.
The corn kernels are then ejected with a blower into a trailer before being transferred to a semi (large truck) for transport to the feed mill. Leroy in fact transferred corn to a trailer pulled by a driven tractor keeping pace with him while he was on the move cutting corn.  He told me it is also possible to do this with a remotely controlled unmanned tractor.
Sue with the farm buildings in the background...