The Time Has Come!

Harvest time has finally arrived here at the ranch! The combine has been serviced, the hoop buildings completed, and the marketing to sell our product has been started. It's an exciting time because now I can finally visualize what I will be marketing. I've been promoted to ranch cook and now my days find me busy in the kitchen making meals for the hungry guys. It's been fun being back in the kitchen doing something I enjoy...and they sure do appreciate a good, hot, homecooked meal instead of the cake batter and hot dogs they were living off of before. I take my camera just about everywhere and in my travels out to deliver meals and I thought I'd share the harvesting experience with you.

Here is the truck returning from the field with a full load of peas that was just combined.

He travels through the scale barn to get a weight... And then drives the short distance to the hoop buildings where we will store the peas and they will sit until it's time to clean, package, and prepare for shipping.

The truck is backed up to the auger...

...where the peas are then dumped from the truck...

...travel up through the auger... ...and onto the large pile of peas already harvested.

Here is a view of the peas prior to being cleaned. There will be more to come when we start using the cleaner. For now the peas need harvesting, the cleaning can wait.

These little guys are EVERYWHERE out here. In fact, I have even found them in the laundry! You can't walk anywhere without them hopping out all around you. The darker portion you see at the bottom of the pile of peas in one of the previous pictures is all grasshoppers. We've contemplated selling organic, chocolate covered grasshoppers...they would probably be a delicacy!