Harvesting - Modern Marvels

This episode features on the harvesting and packing process, not the machine
assembly line. Peach, Corn, Cranberry,Date Palm Tree, Mushroom.

The reflected surface concentrated the sun and increased photosynthesis and sugar contain
that promoted the quality, color, taste of the fruit.

As the worker begin picking, the farmer checks the fruit flesh to verity the decision to start
harvesting.

Use the plunger to check flesh firmness.

Flesh Firmness.

Flesh firmness is often considered the most reliable measure of maturity. As fruit matures,
flesh firmness drops. Flesh firmness is measured through testing the pressure of the pears using a penetrometer with an 8mm plunger.

Water Shower to cool the temperature of the fruit. It is the crucial process to maintain the
quality.

Rinse

Vegetable Oil Coating to maintain the gloss of the fruit.

The inspectors ejected the sub-quality fruit.

These inferior fruit would become juice.

As the fruit passes through the scanner, each piece rotates and photographed by two lenses.
The infrared lens gather shape and essential data and the color lens collected the color of the fruit.

The computer sorted the variable fruit into different boxes depending on the shape,
size, and color.

Basically, the machine can not replace the human labor completely in harvesting of fruit.

This machine plays the interface of the workers increased the safety and efficiency.

Before the combine harvesting machine emerged, the farmer used the horses to harvest
maize. This mechanism automatically harvest corn and then tie stock into the bundle.

John Deere Combine Harvesting. This machine also can be used to harvest the wheat.

In the Midwest, the machine can replace human labor (Labor Intensive -- Capital Intensive)
completely, it harvests the corn field.

As the corn entered the corn head, a series rollers pull corn.

The conveyor moves corn into the separator.

The mechanism slash the corn and then removed the kernel of corn.

Hand picking corn is called " Husking " or " Shucking ".

Cranberry Harvest (Wet Picking) Wisconsin.

As the beater moves forward through the vine that strip the berries.

Cranberries contain air chamber, as free from vines  the natural buoyancy caused to flow.

The Date Palm Tree is considered so beautiful that as many as 15,000 trees are harvested
and sold each year to real estates developers.

The pile of hays and manure.

Compost would become decomposition.

The compost pasteurized.

Creekside Mushroom. World's largest mushroom facility.

We're more than 300 feet underground, three-quarters of a mile into the mouth of a 150-mile maze of tunnels that 75 years ago was a limestone mine. It's dark and silent as the tomb in the slasher movie I can't stop myself from imagining. The only sound is the whirr of the wheels on the golf cart that's ferrying us down, down, down to the pitch-black rooms where Creekside Mushrooms grows its famous Moonlight brand white button mushrooms in Worthington, Armstrong County.

Small lamps on the fronts of the pickers' hard hats cast a ghostly glow across the room, which has a pungent, earthy smell. As for the constant thunking, that's the sound the mushrooms make when they're tossed, their stems carefully trimmed with a paring knife, into 10-pound cardboard boxes. Growing manager Barry Meyer quickly does the math: 192 trays of mushrooms, each of which will produce about 250 pounds of mushrooms over the course of the 34-day growing cycle.

Mushrooms require cool temperatures and high humidity, and this is where Creekside has an advantage: It's always 62 degrees underground.

Number Two mushroom which didn't look so perfect.