Earlage

Last year Ben tried earlage for the first time.  To make earlage you run the combine header on the chopper.  Instead of chopping the whole stalk like in silage, it takes the cob off the stalk, then just chops the cob.  Here is what the set-up looks like:

Of course, any time farm equipment is running, Nicholas wants to be in the middle of it all.

 Here they are in action:

At the beginning of the season Eli and I mostly watched from the car. 

By the end of the season Eli wouldn't stand for that anymore and we found our whole family crammed into the cab of the chopper.

Here are a couple of pictures of the boys waiting for their ride in the chopper.

We had a very wet and cool growing year.  Ben was pretty sure the corn wouldn't dry in time to be combined before the snow fell so he took a lot of the corn as earlage.  It needs to be wetter than grain corn so it worked out well.  They only had to combine a small amount of corn that they were able to put in small layers in multiple bins.  This should help it dry out quicker and not mold in the bins.  They were able to finish harvest before Thanksgiving and the day before our first snowfall.  Boy was Ben happy he was finished when he saw the snow falling!