Book Review - Climbing Kansas Mountains

After seeing our post about taking Eve to the top of the grain elevator, our librarian Jean suggested we check out Climbing Kansas Mountains by George Shannon.  It's a charming book about a boy whose father takes him on a trip through town so they can climb up to the top of the grain elevator.  The illustrations are beautiful and we loved how the book took time to use pictures to help further the story.  It helped to show some of the charm and beauty of a small Kansas town, as well as being an accurate agriculture book.  Eve enjoyed the book and sharing her elevator experience with the boy.  We recommend this book.

Trip to the Top

On Wednesday morning I decided that I needed to go to the top of the grain elevator to take some pictures for yesterday's blog.  Tyler was out farming and with the wind picking up, I wanted to have it done before lunch.  Of course my little follower wanted to come and I, without too much thought, gave in and said yes.  Throughout the years, I have taken many friends and family on a tour to the top and  it is always a good learning experience.  The owners were quick to agree to letting me take her to the top under one circumstance, that she was somehow tied to me.  After a few attempts to rig something up, they decided very thick electrical wire would do the trick.  She thought it was fun that we couldn't go anywhere without the other and so we began our trip to the top.

The way you get to the top of the elevator is in a small metal elevator.  It fits two people tops and go down about an inch when you step in.  I could start to see the nervousness on Eve's face and her hand grip mine tighter but she didn't day anything and so we went on.  She even kept quite for most of the ride up, well until the part when it is dark and you can't see anything.  She started to panic a little, but so did I on my first time up, but it soon becomes brighter and you know you are almost there.  When we got to the top it was nice and loud because they were moving some grain around and loading rail cars and that seemed to panic Eve the most.  We walked down the bin corridor a little and headed outside to see all of the town.  It is so beautiful to look out and see the houses and then since it is a small town, you can see the fields all around.  I think she had a fun time as she told everyone she saw that day about how special it was to go to the top.

Farm Friday - Grain Elevator

Grain Elevators like this one are an iconic part of the Kansas landscape.  They are in every small town and sometimes now are the only thing left operating after a town's residents have all moved away.  Until I moved to Kansas I didn't really know anything about grain elevators.  I didn't know that the middle school I went to was a block away from one (Moyer and Son in Souderton) or that I walked past one everyday in college on my way to class(until Tyler visited and told us what it was).  The Rockingham County Elevator is actually the reason for all the train traffic through JMU and why I was sometimes late to class.  But I did get a crash course in grain elevators when we moved back to Tyler's home town and his family helped me get a job at our local elevator (and I still work part-time there).  The first day I walked in there I couldn't identify have of the grain the elevator took in or had any idea how it worked.  Now its almost been 7 years since I started there and I have learned so much and can't wait to share.

Wooden Elevators like the one in the picture began being built in the 1900s (this one was built in the 1920s and is not longer operational).   They could hold about 20,000 bushels of grain and were not intended for long term storage.  The elevator's main job was to elevate the grain high enough to fill railroad cars.  Concrete elevators began being built to hold larger amounts of grain and have the ability to store the grain throughout the year.  The concrete elevator shown at the top was first built in 1947 and had four additions built on in 1950, 1953, 1957, and 1982.  It is 140 feet to the top and 102 feet to the top of the bins and holds approx. 848,000 bushels.  The elevator takes in wheat, corn, soybeans, and milo (grain sorghum).

So now lets talk about how the elevator operates.  The first step in taking in grain is weighing of trucks.  At this elevator the truck drives onto the scale where it is weighed and probed to get a sample.  The sample is used to determine the quality of the grain as well as how wet the grain is.  Then the grain is dumped out of the trucks into the pits and reweighed to determine the amount of grain the truck had held.   In the picture you can see the scale (it has to be long enough for a semi-truck) and the two dumps.  The windowed part is where the workers weigh the truck and do testing on the samples.

Next, the grain has to be moved up the elevator.  This is done by cups that travel up the elevator leg and at this elevator there is about 700 cups doing the job.  Once at the top, the grain is separated into each bin.  To get the grain down the long corridor, the grain is placed on a conveyor belt and travels down to the tripper.  The tripper is moved by hand to the opening of the bin and deposits the grain down into the bin.  The grain is stored there until it is ready to be loaded out onto trucks or railroad cars.  It is loaded out by another conveyor belt underneath the bin that moves the grain to the loading area.  The pictures show the belt and the one at the bottom is a better view of the tripper.  You can also see the different bin openings on the ground on the hallway.

So there is some of the basics of how a grain elevator works.  Please check back tomorrow for some funny pictures of my adventure taking Eve with me to the top of the elevator to get these pictures.