Bloody hell. Neighbor driving by called me up to suggest there might be an issue.

Thank dog for good neighbors.

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[–] 27 points 7 months ago (13 children)

City boy here, what am I looking at?

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  • [–] 25 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    The thing that looks like a giant pencil tip holds grain, it drops grain onto the track (thin thing that goes up into the air beside it), which carries it up and drops it into a truck to be hauled away. If you don’t turn it off when you drive away it just keeps going, even though nothing is there to catch the grain. All the tan stuff on the ground is the grain that fell out while nothing was there to catch it.

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  • [–] [S] 18 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    That auger in the picture is what we use to put grain on the feed truck, but what went wrong was the auger that goes to the top of that bin from the mill just kept pumping the grain out the top when the bin was full and it fell off the top of the bin into those piles. About 4 tons or so.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Thanks for that, I am still confused because the grain isn't in a pile right near the end of the track. Does the track move in a circle or something?

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    That was puzzling me too! I haven’t ever moved one myself but my understanding was it’s a bit of a pain to move the loader track, so I’m not sure how the grain ended up in that pattern. You’d think if the loader was still running it would only be in a pile at the end. But I’ve also never had to deal with a mess like this.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    It’s a mill, they left it running

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 3 points 7 months ago

    Mostly oats, some rye in it right now. We'd usually mix in barley but we have a bunch of rye since we started growing cover crops and the distillers around only take so much. So it goes in cows.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    So there's an auger that goes up to the top of that hopper bin in the foreground and drops the milled grain in the bin. The actual mill is off to the left and out of the picture.

    Left the mill running, got distracted, the bin filled up but there's no sensor to shut it off (yet) so it just kept pumping grain out and it all slid off the top of the bin and spilled on the ground. That was probably about 4 tons of oats on the ground.

    There was a shovel party to clean it up.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Now my sides hurt from laughing so much at you.

    The shear amount to shit your going to get for this one over the years. I would ask you "Is your mill running?" Everytime I saw you or called you for decades.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 7 months ago

    "Then you'd better catch it..."

    Well, as far as mistakes go, this one was pretty minor, but I figured townies might find it funny. My expensive mistakes would be hard to capture in pictures, or they'd just make me cry.

    Otherwise, we just aim for mistakes that don't kill us.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Damn, what a lovely way to spend a day. Even with a handful of fellow shovelers, that's 4 tons! That's a shit ton of tons!

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It's oats so it's not that bad. It's a lot of volume for not much weight. Each shovel was pretty light and easy to move. Oats run around 32lbs/bushel. Oats are also pretty slick so it it doesn't take much force to push a shovel into them. This mess was more annoying than a serious issue.

    It's not like wheat at 60lbs/bu. That same sized pile would be closer to 8 tons and take a while to pick up. Each shovel full would weigh more and then surface is rougher so it's harder to push a shovel into.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 7 months ago

    That's the standard weight for oats, but generally it actually runs 40 to 46 lbs/bu. The standard weight was built a long time ago before much of the modern seed varieties had been bred.

    That said, you're right, it's still a lot lighter to shovel than something like wheat, and glorious compared to faba beans which is like shovelling gravel.

    And you're right about the slickness, oats are almost a pleasure to shovel. But the dust is really irritating to the skin, at least to most people. It can be rough to deal with at harvest time.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 7 months ago

    Oh, most of it picked up with the loader bucket, but we did have to shovel out from too close to the bin to run the loader, and scrape around to get the rest without adding in gravel.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    Was it windy? How did it end up behind the conveyor?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)
  • 19 comments in c/dull_mens_club@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 45 points 7 months ago

    Accidentally leaving an appliance running sure hits differently when you're a farmer

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  • [–] 36 points 7 months ago
    [–] 35 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    Deer's right now: free food!

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Is it a write-off, or can you salvage a bunch?

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  • [–] [S] 16 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    We scooped most of it up with a couple of loaders and shovelled the rest, and put it back in the raw bin to take another trip around. Hopefully didn't take any gravel with it, that makes a hell of a noise when it goes through the mill and is sub-optimal.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I've heard some chicken farms will take grain mixed with rocks, chickens will pick right through the rocks.

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  • [–] [S] 17 points 7 months ago

    Chickens actually need gravel and grit for their gizzards to grind up their food, so it's not an issue. It's not really and issue for cattle as well as they'll just pass it, it's more of a problem with the mill.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Fun facts, not really fun so much as disgusting and reckless, but they scrape the floor of those chicken concentration camps and scoop up all of the spilt feed and straw and chickenshit and they feed it To like cows and such, and that is to a large degree how bird flu got spread to the dairy cows.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Wouldn't the snow be a problem?

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 7 months ago

    No, actually the moisture can help the milling process. The big guys have mills set up to add water as they mill to improve the consistency of the product.

    Too much moisture and the grain will sprout and clump up in the bin, but snow isn't really much actual water.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    Here are your messages, sir:

    Please move your grain.

    You have 10 minutes to move your grain.

    Your grain has been milled into a heap.

    You have 10 minutes to move your heap.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    That poor insomniac dyslexic atheist that stayed up all night wondering if there was a dog

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    Start shovelin boys!

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    "Thank dog" 🤣

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