Tuesday, June 23
I was invited to go to the Homestead farm to watch and photograph the process of separating tons of “buggy” rice from the bags and boxes.
I don’t think each bag of rice had bugs, but when they found bugs in some bags, the warehouse had to be emptied and could no longer be used for human consumption.
When our nephew Larry and his son Travis learned about this rice, they decided that it would work to mix with food for their cattle.
These two large machines from E. E. Shenk were used to separate the rice from the bags and boxes.
The dump truck captured the rice while the trash went out the other end of the blue machine.
The process began when Larry lifted a skid unto the red machine. The wooden skid was thrown aside, while the bags, boxes and rice were chopped up and moved by conveyor to the blue machine. (The machine could have chopped up the skid, but Larry did not want to take a chance on having pieces of nails ending up in the rice.)
The chopped up bags, boxes and rice.
Rice, only, went into the dump truck. (How does a machine know how to do that?)
The trash was conveyed to the discard pile.
The process was repeated many times during the day.
Looking at the rice inside the dump truck.
Diane thought Anthony would enjoy watching this process, and he did, but after awhile it was fairly routine so he reverted to climbing over logs.
After seeing the process many times, I went home to get some work done. I could keep an eye on the process from our kitchen window or patio.
Using my camera zoom
By evening the big machines were gone, the rice was taken to a storage bin, and fire was devouring the trash.
Oh, my goodness what a job! But a brilliant idea to mix the rice with the cattle feed! When I lived in Sacramento, much of the rice grown nationally was grown in that area — low, fertile, riverbed and appropriate climate — most was sold to Japan! And the machine separating the rice out reminds me that I once lived on an island near Seattle — they grew peas there, and they brought the vines in from the fields, ran them through a huge machine which shelled the peas and discarded the vines and the pods! The peas were immediately frozen. Agricultural machinery is amazing!
Agricultural machinery is indeed amazing!
Very interesting. So good to not have to waste the rice. Thanks for posting.
Glad you found it interesting.
It would be a shame to waste all that food with so many hungry people in the world. In Africa we always sifted the bugs out of our flour before we used it. If it was too buggy it made the bread taste funny, so we used that to make chocolate cake. Didn’t hurt us a bit.
Your comments remind me of my aunt’s comments when they lived in Nigeria.