The New Cleaner

Paul's grandpa Orval built the warehouse that is now ours.  Paul and his dad got to be experts at fixing the cleaners, augers, and other parts of the process.

However, if something is installed in 1948, by about 2014 it becomes obvious that you can fix so much and then it needs to be replaced.

So a new cleaner was ordered.

A cleaner, in this case, is a machine about the size of your average espresso stand.  It is full of motors and chutes.  You can insert these big screens about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide.  The holes in the screens are  made to let specific seeds through and keep specific weeds out, or vice versa.  Seed [or grain or corn] comes in the top and flows down over the screens, which shake shake shake and sort sort sort and then the good stuff goes down in the hopper to get bagged by Steven, and the bad stuff goes into a big wooden box to turn into cattle feed.

After many delays and frustrations the new cleaner arrived, and on one of our snow days of last month, it was installed.

To my inexperienced eyes, it seemed to defy all the laws of physics--this long arm extending out from the big glorified forklift with 5000 pounds of new cleaner sitting on it, getting hoisted 20 feet in the air.  I kept thinking it was going to crash down and take the warehouse with it.

But of course it didn't.

Paul stood up there and yelled, and his nephew Keith slowly maneuvered the new cleaner in place in a very dicey and delicate operation.

I took some videos and posted them on YouTube for the sake of former sackers who might enjoy watching.

Here.

Here's Keith and his adorable daughter Isabella, in matching scarves.

 I don't think these machines are required to coordinate their colors and names, but they did, in one language or another.

Quote of the Day:
"Is there seed spillin' out of the cleaner-hopper??  Is the auger rattlin'??"
--Paul, at my birthday dinner last year when a warehouse emergency interrupted our meal