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COMBINE DRIVING: TECHNOLOGY GETS COUNTRY by Marauder

COMBINE DRIVING: TECHNOLOGY GETS COUNTRY

Looks like something you would see out of a book on Walt Whitman no?  I took this picture over the weekend while visiting my grandfather in the country wilds of Cadiz, KY.  Apart from playing central operations for the Trigg County Ham Festival earlier in October, Cadiz is also home to a pretty substantial farming community.  My family owns corn, soybean, and dark tobacco fields.  As a girl who sometimes likes to get her hands dirty, I thought I would take a trip out to the soy bean farm.  Above is the shot taken from my 2 mega pixel iPhone.

I decided to get a bit more hands on and take a couple trips around the field on this piece of equipment above called a combine, a harvester used to pick the soy beans.  The machine separates the bean from the pod filling the tank.  Not only did I feel like a bit of a bad ass, I found the way this thing worked to be pretty damn remarkable.

Above is a shot from inside the cab of the combine looking down on the header picking soy beans as we put-putted along.  The header is loaded with a reciprocating knife which moves back and forth to de-pod the soybeans in creepy precision.  The machine senses the distance from the ground and consistently moves the header up and down to account for any changes in the field.  Some of these combines are loaded with GPS, key to making any piece of technology that much better.  Apparently, my cousin Bob first outlines the field with the GPS-loaded combine.  The machine then literally turns itself as it moves about the field.  And here I thought the driverless SUV from CES was pretty kick-ass.

Now, I know farming may not be so excitement central for us urban types.  But my trip to farm country reminded me that technology isn’t segregated for usage by city-dwellers.  It finds itself in the most remote places.  In fact, the town of Cadiz also has free wireless.  Cadiz 1.  NYC 0.   To be fair, at least New York isn’t located in a ‘dry county.’  Life doesn’t really seem worth living without a Grey Goose martini served up with a double tooth pick of olives.  Sigh. . .

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