Trans Iowa v12: Bringing In The Harvest

A combine in a soybean field

One of the treats of doing recon for any Trans Iowa is seeing the countryside. It varies a lot from year to year, but this time we hit on a day where there was a lot of harvesting going on.

Everywhere we went, combines, tractors, wagons, trucks, and semi-tractor trailers were about doing their business. One thing I noted was that when you saw a combine crew, it usually consisted of three vehicles/trailers/implements.

First was the combine proper, which almost always took up the entire road, although through cooperation, we were able to pass by several of them on the day that we were out. These rigs were minus their "heads" which were either a corn harvesting head or the grain harvesting head which was for soybeans. That was generally being towed on a trailer by a pick-up truck. Then the third part was an enormous tractor pulling an enormous grain wagon for grain transfer from the combine when its on-board grain storage was at capacity. (I apologize to my more technical savvy readers that work for John Deere that know the proper terminology here!)

Anyway, following are a few images from the harvest of 2015. We saw so much more than I had a chance to photograph, but I hope this imparts a bit of what it was like out there yesterday. Enjoy!

Where harvesting had taken place already, there were many round bales of the refuse which sometimes is fed to cattle.

We would sometimes pass semi-tractor trailers awaiting loading so the grain could be taken to storage. 

Mostly we saw soybeans being harvested, although corn was also being picked in places now.

We saw this Bald Eagle standing in a recently harvested field. A VERY rare sight to see one on the ground like this. 

My attempt at "art" showing how many combines were kicking up dust as they harvested.