Elevator awash
By MIKE CORN
GORHAM -- Boosted by a day of good weather and the promise of even better days to come, area farmers took to the field en masse -- never mind the still wet fields in some cases -- to harvest fall crops.
The resulting crush of trucks waiting to dump grain at United Ag Service in Gorham snaked around the elevator, onto a side street and out onto Old Highway 40.
A many as 10 trucks were waiting to unload at the elevator Tuesday evening, even though the sun had set and moisture levels in grain fields had started to climb higher.
Even as trucks were unloading, a non-stop convoy of tractor-trailer trucks were pulling up behind the elevator to haul out a burgeoning supply of grain.
"Just getting started," elevator manager John Lapka said as he watched the seemingly endless supply of trucks.
Because of the darkness, when moisture levels start rising, he didn't expect the line to last long.
"It's going to shut down here in about a half hour," Lapka said, in between testing grains for pounds-per-bushel and moisture levels and running scale tickets out to waiting drivers.
Inside the elevator, just across the street to the east, Dwight Carter waited for trucks.
One after the other, he pushed them through, either raising gates on the grain boxes of smaller trucks or dumping grain from tractor-trailer trucks that were hauling hundreds of bushels of grain.
Running like a well-oiled machine, the procession of trucks only slowed when a truckload of sunflowers came in, forcing Carter to divert the flow of grain to prevent milo and sunflowers from becoming mixed together. A load of soybeans following close behind promised to do the same.
Everett Schrant was among the farmers pushing hard to get the grain unloaded so he could head back out to the field for yet another load.
Schrant said he was cutting milo about 4 miles south of Gorham.
"Good," he said of the quality of the crop. "Better than last year."
That's evident in the rush to ship out grain nearly as fast as it was being delivered.
Leland Windholz was busy climbing a ladder on the side of one silo to open up the load-out chute to fill waiting trucks.
He wasn't sure how many trucks he had filled Tuesday.
"I only started after dinner," he said.
Farmers have been waiting to start cutting but have been delayed by rains and wet fields.
"There's a lot of moisture in the ground," Lapka said of the slow progress of the harvest.
Moisture levels in the milo being brought in varied, ranging anywhere from 14 percent to 16 percent -- borderline for storage at elevators.
"Most of the fields, the ground is still wet," Lapka said, explaining the continued moisture in grain and the inability of some farmers to get out in the field.
Despite that, farmers had been streaming into the elevator "pretty steady all afternoon," Lapka said Tuesday evening.
Farmers are anxious to get the crop harvested and in the elevator as soon as possible.
"There's some good milo out there," Lapka said. "What we're getting now is good quality. Test weights are good."