Page 44 - The Farming Years proof

JUST BARLEY
We must have had a full team of available daughters and boy friends. I can safely assume Sylvia gave them a good lunch – al- though, I can’t remember what it was. Lamb maybe?
We now had to make a concrete base 18' x 54' in English, 5.5 x 16.5 metric in French. It was possible to have an 18 ft wide base and still have room to get the combine between the 2 rows of stables.
I used the vegetable garden post and rail fence cut down as shut- tering on one side and I think had our professionals make the balance of the needed shuttering and spread the mixed concrete for the stable’s base to get to the barley eld.
Jo’s boyfriend Mike and I assembled the sections for the stables and bolted them together with nice new bolts. The stable doors were only the lower part but the area was well sheltered against the wind with the other stables opposite. So, that was the limit for stable room with 11 riding school horses and the grazing balanced.
We were coming up to harvest and had to incorporate a realisation that 40 ft long articulated corn lorries could now carry 24 tons. not only were the trailer chassis bases going up with the increas- ing weight frame capacity but so were the sides of the trailer to take the increased volume. We had managed up to now with a tractor fore-end loader bucket that could reach over the sides of the vehicles, not so now.
To deal with this new need we bought a very long – about 8 inch wide grain auger with a 3-phase electric motor and high capac- ity. It was mounted on a frame with wheels that made it easily moveable. It was then possible to use the tractor with its bucket to maintain a pile of corn on the ground over the entry point of the auger. But, it still took a while to ll the 40’ trailers with the truck driver moving the truck to spread the load along the trailer. For
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