I wasn’t expecting to get invited into a corn harvester, but I certainly couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
There will be a gallery placed here, where this text is, at a later time. Currently, I’m having some problems with WordPress’s image uploader and the stills I took of and in the harvester.
[LIP SYNCING TO LINDSAY LOHAN’S VOICE] On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was. “It’s October 3rd.”
[END CUTAWAY]
That’s right, it’s Mean Girls Day! But that has nothing to do with today’s video. Today’s video is about corn.
[CUT TO VINE OF A DUBSMASH RECORDING]
[LIP SYNCING TO CHILD’S VOICE] Are you a cornfield? ‘Cuz I’m stalking you.
[END CUTAWAY]
This vlog is hard to record. The camera keeps stopping and things keep happening, like you! You! What are you doing? You’re in my face! Aw, but she’s cute, though.
So for anyone who doesn’t know by now, I live on a farm.
[CUT TO VINE]
I’m a pretty corny guy. Get it? Corn? Get it? DO YOU [CENSORED] get it?
[END CUTAWAY]
So I’ve taken to starting to record Instagram vlogs; mini, little minute vlogs.
Hello! I’m gonna try to record a, like, weird video on Instagram and stuff, that’s just just a little snippet. I’m gonna talk. Gonna vlog. I’m gonna at you. Right now. Right now, this is…I think I can have up to a minute of this? So get ready. Get. In. Your. Seats. ‘Cuz I’m Adam the Alien and you are watching INSTAGRAM!
[END FLASHBACK]
And I was right in the middle of doing one of those about the harvesting of corn…
Just the other day, with my first one, I was talking about how the corn was not yet corn. And obviously, I was wrong, because they’re harvesting it now.
[END FLASHBACK]
God, I’ve tried to record this clip so many times, and it keeps glitching.
[GLITCH]
Recording vlogs is hard when your camera keeps glitching!
[GLITCH]
Okay! So here’s the story. I was out here recording a min-vlog for Instagram about corn and the corn harvester that was driving by, when the driver of the corn harvester waves me over and invites me in!
His name is Chris. I got to chat with him for a bit. I didn’t get to film all of it, because my camera was being weird. And I’m not sure how much of it is audible. I’m gonna try to put in as much as I can, but it’s a very noisy machine to be inside of.
[CUT TO INTERVIEW]
ADAM: How long have you been doing this?
CHRIS: Uh, this is probably my sixth or seventh year doing this in the summertime. It’s for about two months a year. We pick about a thousand acres of corn for about 15 different farmers, including our own farm.
ADAM: How does this work, down here?
CHRIS: So what happens is there’s knives, we call ’em knife rolls. They’re cylinder-shaped knives that oppose each other like a gear, and they pull the stalk straight down. And as they’re pulling the stalk down, they’re grinding it up. It’s grinding up the stalk. And when it hits these metal plates you see down there, it knocks the cobs off. Then the rubber belts gather up the cobs and run them into an auger.
(So now we’re getting jammed up again. We’re so low, here, the corn is so short we’re picking up dirt.)
That auger then gathers them up, and there’s a conveyor belt underneath us. That conveyor belt then dumps the corn onto the conveyor belt directly behind us. Then the third elevator puts it in the tote or the truck. Then we fill the truck.
We usually go a little faster than this, but this corn is real short and, see: it’s breaking the stalks. And that just…you pick it, and it gets kind of trashy. It’s better if you end up with just cob. Oop! See, we jammed her up a little bit.
Where you see the corn disappear, there’s a big fan that sucks up most of the tr–
[GLITCH]
ADAM: There’s a big fan that sucks up most of the trash?
[GLITCH]
CHRIS: It’s about seven or eight tons of corn. Well, no, right there, that’s…yeah, that’s probably six and a half or seven. This thing will pick about…if we’re moving real fast, it’ll pick about 40 tons an hour.
ADAM: This is an impressive machine, for sure.
CHRIS: It’s cool. It’s like…it’s the only real piece of farm equipment I don’t mind sitting in all day.
[END INTERVIEW FOOTAGE]
There were a couple takeaways I got from this aside from just learning more about how the machine ran. And one of those was that I don’t often talk to the people who work on the land we lease out. I’ve grown up with them constantly being around me, but because they were working and I was a kid, it was not really a social…thing that was gonna happen.
But I often criticize people who grow up in the cities and don’t, like, talk to their neighbors ever. And I realized I have my own version of that. But if you take the time to just even acknowledge the existence of the people immediately around you, who you normally think of as background noise, it’s amazing the stories that you can discover. And the connections you can make. Even if I never see Chris again, I have had a fascinating experience just sitting and talking with him for a very short amount of time.
And this is the kind of thing I love. I love stories. I love learning about people and the world around me. And I can think of no better way to start off a whole new year of video blogging.
That’s right, we are now in my tenth year.
[GLITCH]
In the–
[GLITCH]
Here I am trying to get all profound and the camera’s glitching again, so–
[GLITCH]
Grraaghh! Not quite working still!
[GLITCH]
I’ll save my thoughts for when my camera’s working–
[GLITCH]
Seriously? Still? It’s still doing it!
[GLITCH]
What a way to enter Season 10.
[GLITCH]
All right, I’m gonna q–…do this quick…until next time, I’m Adam the Alie–
[GLITCH]
You can’t do it quick when you stutter, Adam!
[GLITCH]
Until next time, I’m Adam the Alien, fare thee we–
[GLITCH]
Seriously?
[GLITCH]
That’s all for now. Until next time, I’m Adam the Alien. Fare thee well!
[POST-VIDEO PROMOTIONAL BOX DISPLAYS]
I’d like to thank my friend Ravit for filming some beautiful footage of the harvester moving around the field. Especially, of course, while I was in it.
[CUT TO FOOTAGE FROM WITHIN THE HARVESTER OF RAVIT FILMING ADAM]
ADAM: [LAUGHING] I think one of my friends is getting shots of us.
[END CUTAWAY]
I’ll post a link for Ravit down in the video description.
And of course, this video included clips from videos posted to Instagram, Vine, and Dubsmash. Links to all of those are in the video description, and of course you can find me on all of those as AdamTheAlien.
It’s been a pleasure as always. Once again, until next time, I’m Adam the Alien. Fare thee well.
Writer. Actor. Director. Chalk artist. YouTuber. Nerdfighter. Traveler. Pansexual. Genderfluid. Millennial. Socialist. Living a complex life beyond those words.
