Grain Elevator
In several of my previous posts I've mentioned the local grain elevator. Some people may not be quite sure what I'm talking about,since I'm not sure I really knew what one was until I lived in a town that had one. I particularly have this quirk of not looking up unless someone tells me to. Well, if you don't look up you'll definitely miss this tower of a structure!
A grain elevator's most basic functions are to unload, load, and store grain.
In this picture, you can see the back of a truck unloading (1), the grain spilling into a pit (2), the buckets on the leg (3) taking the grain to the head or top (4, this is why it is called an elevator) where it is fed into the distributor (5) that splits it between the bins (9). The grain can also be unloaded into rail cars or back into trucks. Roy thought it important to point out that this is actually a diagram of a wood elevator. Haxtun's elevator is concrete. Their function is the same, but building it is very different. You might be surprised to know that the bins of a concrete elevator are made with one continuous pour! |  |
In this picture above,you can see the head house easily - the rectangular structure above the cylindrical bins. That metal structure between the two head houses is a head and distributor without a house. The house is usually added to protect the head from weather.
Our elevator was built in three parts. The original part starts at the farthest right and extends back to just before the houseless head. The second part is the houseless head back to just before the other house. And the last part, of course, is the house on the left and everything thing behind it.
There is a hallway running along the top of the bins that connects all the head houses. Grain can be moved along a belt in that hallway to all the different head houses and bins.
| I remember my mom commenting the first time that she drove out to Haxtun that it reminded her of when they lived in Indiana because you could tell you were approaching a town when you saw the elevator. Elevators play a central role in farming towns. It is important for any grain farmer to have an elevator close by. Transportation costs money, as we are all so very aware of. An elevator, like ours, is also the physical embodiment of our local cooperative. Farmers buy stock in the coop and receive patronage and the right to vote on the business decisions of the coop. Some coop issues can tear at a community and cause deep concern, which demonstrates its importance in our lives. Another benefit of membership is the free meal once a year. I like that one. But I'm going to leave it there for now because I plan to do a post on our local coop in the future. |  |
Posted by Susan at August 17, 2009 
Categories: Farming
Tags: concrete head store rail cars co-ops wood elevator leg unload load head house coops grain cooperatives Haxtun
Categories: Farming
Tags: concrete head store rail cars co-ops wood elevator leg unload load head house coops grain cooperatives Haxtun
new book traces the history of grain elevators from 1843 to 1943: "American Colossus" (Colossal Books, March 2009). http://www.american-colossus.com
Reply to this