Carrot Harvesting

Monday was the first day of the carrot harvest.

17 students turned up there all bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to go for the morning shift. Bins were lined with plastic, loaded on the trailer and taken out into the field to follow alongside the harvester to collect all the carrots.

It is quite amazing how the harvester works.
It digs down under the carrots and lifts them up, at which time the green tops of the carrots are caught up in 2 belts and carried up to the top of the harvester. Once they reach the top there are knives which chop the tops off the carrots and the carrots drop onto a conveyor belt and are carried out the shoot.

Unfortunately, something wasn't adjusted correctly and it was chopping the carrots instead of just the green tops - therefore making them 'seconds'. Alistair spent the whole day stopping and starting trying to get it right. They weren't successful, so on Tuesday they decided to pull the harvester apart and do some work on it. By the end of the day they were worse off than at the beginning, as they had broken something on it and will now need to pull it apart again and fix what broke!
Today they are working on it again.

Kyle is off to Oregon in a couple of hours for singing lessons and to do some concerts. He will be gone for 5 days.


As a note of interest - the guy driving the tractor is called Nolan............

P.S. Remember to double click the photos to make them bigger