There are a whole lot of things that change, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly…you get the picture. What caught my attention this week was farm grain storage. Travelling hither and yon this week I covered a lot of territory. The grain handling systems on many farms I saw have a larger capacity, by far, than the country grain elevator of my early years.
    My earliest memories of granaries come from my grandparents’ farms. My paternal grandfather was an advanced farmer for his time. The storage unit was a drive through system- huge doors on each end of a long building. Teams in one end, off load, and out the other. I have no idea of the capacity, to me it was really big! When my father chose to set out on his own, it was, at the beginning, hard scrabble farming. Heck, our home was a converted granary. The building storing the grain was a patched up possibly ten by twelve foot wooden structure. Tin cans had been flattened out and nailed over rodent holes, on the floor and on the walls. Turnbuckled rods kept the walls together. They were at the ideal height- to whack your head on when you were shovelling the grain out! I can bring to mind the itchiness of the oats and barley, the smooth sound of flowing wheat or flax…
    I recognise that the wooden bins were indeed an appearance of progress. Painted bins added importance, and a row of bins was affluent. Then came the round metal bins, short, squat sentinels of the farmyard. They became larger, much larger, and then we saw hopper bins, white guards flanking the perimeter of the working farm yard. Then hopper bins with aeration fans.
    Now the systems are immense, ginormous, monstrous! There are auger networks, walkways, antennas I  assume for communication, aeration tunnels, and rows of bins, that again, probably hold more than the country elevator of the fifties did! I am impressed. That is a whole lot of changes!
    The elevators at Graysville, I think a Pool, and a UGG, had personality. So did the operators. That little dust filled office, with gosh awful coffee, had the moisture tester and the permit books. Yes, I really do remember permit books! Having no brothers, I was privileged to haul grain. This was with a half ton truck. You drove up the ramp, had your vehicle’s front wheels on the lift mechanism, and stepped out. As the front end rose, you opened the tailgate and the operator sifted a handful of the grain, sometimes taking a chew of the grain, and when all was said and done, you waited for the truck to descend and drove home, ready to repeat the trip if there was room on your permit.  As the trucks got bigger, and had their own hoist, the procedure was much the same. Even at the time I appreciated the fact the elevator man allowed me to clean the box, never offering to help the slip of a teenage girl. (And, yes, I was a slip of a girl!)
    So many changes in farming. In almost everything. One can only imagine what comes next.