I find mowing the grass to be a pretty pleasurable exercise. It allows me to escape from the world for a while and it is one of those tasks that gives you a pretty clear result when you are finished. You can SEE what you have done when the lawn is cut. Consider this video the ultimate example of that because it features an awesome CLAAS Jaguar 960 forage harvester chopping silage like your riding mower snips fine fescue. The machine is a wonder of engineering and if you can believe it, the 626hp rating actually puts it in the middle of the CLAAS lineup, not the top. They make a 775hp and a 880hp version of this machine. Yeah baby!
The real engineering here is centered in the head that actually takes the stalks down and literally chops them into pieces. Between the spiked rotating wheels and the knife drums that are self-sharpening, a person would end up as something even finer than red mist if they got sucked through this monster. While corn stalks are not exactly steel bars, it is still pretty amazing to see this machine chewing through a field at the speed that it does. The second half of the video that shows the volume of silage created when the fields are cleared out is amazing. You will see massive tractors with pusher blades that look like toys on the huge piles and mountains that they have created.
The technology in modern farm equipment is stunning. I happened to be on an airplane with a guy a few weeks ago and after exchanging pleasantries I couldn’t help but notice his John Deere folio. This was a former missile guidance engineer that was now working with Deere on their GPS guidance systems. That should give you some idea at just how hardcore that industry is.
Meanwhile, watch this monster machines get their work done and make it look easy in the process.
