Update: Just after the new year, in early January 2006, the remarkable farming vehicle known as a combine will finesee and chew through the stalks of the Not A Cornfield crop. The field was planted by hand, beginning June 25, 2005, and by machine, beginning July 17. 2005. (The stalks are bare of corn. The ears in the field have previously been hand-picked by community volunteers and Not A Cornfield team members.)

The machine harvesting will be accomplished via a John Deere 9660 Combine arriving from Tipton, California. The 33-foot-long, 12 1/2-foot-tall, 13 1/2-foot-wide, green-painted machine with a canary yellow racing stripe -- if that word applies to farm work -- and a front wheel six-feet-tall comes down Interstate 5 on the back of an eighteen-wheeler. Another two semis join the convoy, carrying the combine's accessories, including an 8-row corn head, rollers, feed house, stalk cutter and smaller John Deere to tow it. Escort vehicles help guide the big rigs down Alameda Street, onto Baker, and onto the art project grounds.

When the combine isn’t mowing the stalks, or parked on the project grounds for public witnessing, the goliath will operate in its processing and separating mode. Not A Cornfield’ers feed ears of corn culled from thirty agricultural bins –- the fruits, so to speak, of the previous corn picking –- into the one end of the combine. The machine then sorts, separates and expels husks from the far end, while sending kernels through a chimney of sorts, creating a rainfall, or rainbow of multi-hued seeds, cascading earthward, landing back again in bins.

One last note: Of the Not A Cornfield ears that remain intact on the project grounds, tens of thousands of ears are scheduled to hang, drying and on display, for weeks on the fence located on the east side of the 32-acre grounds. A break in this Wall of Corn exists to allow continued viewing of the Zanja Madre.