"You do not wake the dragon" - Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
My professional life comes in definite seasons. Maybe some or all of them aren't what you'd ordinarily look forward to, but they're always looming out there. Tangible to be sure, and unstoppable. Yesterday (and last night) another began, this one referred to as 'Grain Drying'.
Long story short, the crops are coming in horribly wet around here. They must be at approximately 15% moisture for storage, and they're coming across the scale at upwards of 34%. So, the grain must be dried. Like everything else, there is a machine for the job, this a large 'burner' that runs on natural gas, electricity, and tired COOP employees. The technician got the drier moving about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, and we ran out of corn about 1:30a.m. this morning, drying at about 13% of the dryer's discharge capacity (about 400 bushel of corn per hour).
In comparison, we were moving about 4 times faster last year... It's going to be a long season.
From a certain perspective, we didn't HAVE to run so late into the night, but... I guess I've finally learned that work needs to be done when it needs to be done. For example, if I had put it off until this morning, the air temperature today is at least 10 degrees colder and the winds are a good 25 m.p.h. faster. *Grin* I'm a little short on sleep, but last night wasn't so bad after all.
Long night, but... If my crew and I can hang together like this, we'll do fine.
*Taking a photo with a cell phone at night is kind of... Not good. But there's a little to be seen here. The 'bright spot' off to the left is the approximate location of the dryer controls - one might call that 'home port', the blue circles on the right are the burners doing their thing (natural gas at its best).
No comments:
Post a Comment