Upgrading the seed cleaning warehouse

We have been steadily upgrading the cleaning warehouse to allow us to handle more crops. When it was originally put in back in 2005 it was designed specifically for grass seed. In order to allow us to handle many different seed types we have had to put in a bypass which allows us to pour seed directly into the main cleaner. The two machines being bypassed are a pre-cleaner, which takes out heavy material such as dirt clods and rocks, and a debearder which removes the small beard or "tail" from grass seeds. The blue pipe in the photo has a lever which diverts the seed from the first elevator directly into the main cleaner's feeder hopper. If we put wheat and oats through the pre-cleaner and debearder it would fall into the waste pipe or get crushed in the debearder. Other upgrades we have done are adding new screens for the main cleaner. Specific size screens are needed for each crop. We didn't have screens for flax or hard red wheat initially. We ordered the flax screens last year for the Deck Family Farm flax, and we ordered screens for hard red wheat so we can clean our own wheat crop. Other modifications we have planned are adding another Heid and replacing the discs in the Carters. These 2 machines separate out weed seed using a system of rotating discs and cylinders. Adding and upgrading these machines allows us to get extremely pure test results. We also are looking to install a gravity table in the near future. A gravity table is a precision cleaning machine that separates out seeds and other elements such as tiny bits of chaff and pebbles by their weight. Now that our warehouse is certified organic we expect to get more and more cleaning business for specialty crops, and we want to be able to handle most any crop. Things are looking good!