Dan sits high in the air at the front of the machine. He says he has a “box seat.” Behind him on a bench sits a helper who ties the bags as they fill up and puts new bags in place. Dan says it won’t be long before somebody invents a machine that will reap the wheat, grind the flour and bake bread right there in the field! All of Dan’s machines are wonderful inventions, but they can be dangerous, too, if people are careless. To give himself and his helpers warning, he has painted bright stripes and markers around open places where fingers might get caught in moving parts. EGGS, TOO Dan has a flock of fine white Leghorn chickens. He takes care of them by machinery, for eggs are a crop, too. The hens live in cages with wire floors, so that they keep very clean. All their droppings go through the wire to a platform below. With a special scoop, run by his tractor, Dan cleans the manure from the platform and puts it in a pile to be used as fertilizer on the fields. Every day the chickens have their meals brought to them on a moving belt. The eggs they lay drop through their nests onto another belt that carries them away. Finally a machine sorts the eggs according to size, ready for packing. Some farmers raise chickens for the market. Of course, the feathers must be taken off after the chickens have been killed. There are machines for this, too. One kind has mechanical fingers that pluck the feathers as chickens go past on a moving belt. [Illustration] MACHINES FOR BIGGER FARMS Dan’s neighbor Al has a big dairy farm, with lots of cows to milk every day, and land enough to grow their feed. Besides his corn picker, Al has other special machines. One of them cuts corn while it is still green, chops it up fine and loads it into a truck. The truck has a sort of cage over it to keep the corn from spilling out. Next, Al turns his tractor into a stationary engine which runs a blowing machine. A wide belt from a pulley on the tractor turns the blower, which shoots the chopped-up corn to the top of a storage tower called a silo. The green stuff ferments in the silo and turns into wonderful food for the cows. Al’s fields are so big that he needs larger plows than the one Dan uses. He hires an airplane to spread dust that kills plant-eating insects. Al plants his hayfields with a seeding machine that he pulls behind the tractor. Grass seed is so tiny that it can’t be planted deep. Al’s seeder sprinkles just the right amount of seed on the soil, and then squeezes a thin covering of earth on top. He says the machine “tucks each seed to bed.” [Illustration] After the mowing machine has cut the hay, Al pulls his automatic baler across the field. The baler scoops the hay up, then presses it into a box-shaped bundle, slices it off neat and square, and ties it with strong twine. One by one the bales drop out on the field, ready for a truck to pick them up.