(Back to the present day reality) I moseyed up to the Davenport Union Warehouse where trucks were cramming the warehouse grounds, dumping bulk wheat at the average of 12,000 bushels an hour. Many trucks have 10 wheels built under their rigs, so they can haul over 600 bushels of wheat without squashing the tires. Some big farmers around here are consolidating with other farmers. Fields are now being swallowed up by huge hungry looking rotary combines. Then bingo, it’s all over with.
What a change years made in harvest methods. In those by gone years, putting away 20 to 30 acres of wheat in a day was considered good cutting. Out here at Rocklyn, I was hauling 30 sacks of wheat on a high bed truck. The sack strings were cut with a jack knife, and the wheat was then hand dumped into a chute. It usually took 20 minutes to unload about 65 bushels of wheat. In that length of time, the Union Warehouse would have unloaded and stored 4,000 bushels of wheat.
Farmer's Union warehouse, Davenport, 1920s Postcard
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