Corn isn’t the only thing that grows on Dan’s farm. He raises tomatoes for the market, too. At planting time, he needs two helpers who ride on little seats very close to the ground behind the tractor. They put the tender little tomato plants one by one into a trench which the planting machine digs, and then a special wheel covers the roots with earth.
Dan has some wheat fields, too. In the spring, after the ground is harrowed, a wide planting machine sows many rows of wheat at a time. And it drops out fertilizer to feed the plants on the same trip.
Many farmers use their tractors for harvesting wheat, but Dan doesn’t. Instead, he rents a shiny red reaper which he calls a “package job,” because it moves itself along and does the whole harvesting at once. It cuts the wheat, shakes the grain loose from the stalk and separates it from the husks. If there are weeds growing in the wheat, the machine separates the weed seeds from the wheat kernels and spills them into different bags.
Dan sits high in the air at the front of the machine. He says he has a “box seat.” Behind him on a bench sits a helper who ties the bags as they fill up and puts new bags in place. Dan says it won’t be long before somebody invents a machine that will reap the wheat, grind the flour and bake bread right there in the field!
All of Dan’s machines are wonderful inventions, but they can be dangerous, too, if people are careless. To give himself and his helpers warning, he has painted bright stripes and markers around open places where fingers might get caught in moving parts.
EGGS, TOO
Dan has a flock of fine white Leghorn chickens. He takes care of them by machinery, for eggs are a crop, too. The hens live in cages with wire floors, so that they keep very clean. All their droppings go through the wire to a platform below. With a special scoop, run by his tractor, Dan cleans the manure from the platform and puts it in a pile to be used as fertilizer on the fields.
Every day the chickens have their meals brought to them on a moving belt. The eggs they lay drop through their nests onto another belt that carries them away. Finally a machine sorts the eggs according to size, ready for packing.
Some farmers raise chickens for the market. Of course, the feathers must be taken off after the chickens have been killed. There are machines for this, too. One kind has mechanical fingers that pluck the feathers as chickens go past on a moving belt.