Miller Farms Goes Nuts!

Since it rained a couple of inches over the past few days and we are taking a break from the field, I thought I would share some of the harvest pictures that I haven't had time to show!

We still have about 12 acres of peanuts to go, so hopefully the fields will dry soon. The peanuts should've been harvested in September and October!

Here is the tractor pulling the combine. The peanut vines that have been inverted are pulled into the combine and shaker pans seperate the peanuts from the vines.

The vines and other trash blow out the back of the combine,

while the peanuts get blown into the basket on top.

Sometimes (ok, a lot) the combine gets choked up by wet vines/dirt, and it needs to be cleaned out.

When that happens, we empty the peanuts left in the suck tube into these orange sacks, and we have been selling them to random people.

When the basket on top gets full of peanuts (3 tons)...

the combine is driven over to the dump cart,

and the basket is dumped into the cart.

The dump cart is then pulled next to a peanut trailer and is raised up.

Then it dumps into the trailer.

This trailer has about 3 dumps on it.

This trailer is full (24 tons of peanuts) and ready to be hauled down to South Alabama. We sell our peanuts to the Brooks Peanut Company in Samson, Alabama. They have a contract with the Mars Company, so if you eat a Snickers or M&Ms, you could be eating our peanuts!

Peanut pickin' days also bring out the scavengers family, friends, random neighbors, a road commissioner, and even a car load full of non-English speaking Hispanics.

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I didn't make it to the corn fields often because I was usually in the chicken houses, the peanut fields, or the cotton fields, but here's a couple of pictures of the harvest!

I found this little cotton stalk growing in the middle of the corn field! I guess cotton doesn't combine very well, haha.

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I promise to have some pictures of the house soon, it's still not completely put together!