{"id":344352,"date":"2025-10-31T00:27:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T00:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/344352\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T00:27:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T00:27:15","slug":"la-harpe-farmers-celebrate-completion-of-roquette-grain-elevator-rebuild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/344352\/","title":{"rendered":"La Harpe farmers celebrate completion of Roquette grain elevator rebuild"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">LA HARPE, Ill. (WGEM) &#8211; It\u2019s been more than two years since a derecho <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgem.com\/2024\/11\/06\/were-not-going-anywhere-la-harpe-roquette-getting-new-grain-bins-after-devastating-2023-derecho\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wgem.com\/2024\/11\/06\/were-not-going-anywhere-la-harpe-roquette-getting-new-grain-bins-after-devastating-2023-derecho\/\">destroyed all but one of the bins at the Roquette grain elevator<\/a> in La Harpe. As of August 2025, all of those bins have been rebuilt from the ground up \u2014 and more than 150 area farmers gathered to celebrate the facility\u2019s return Thursday, Oct. 30.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">The new bins are larger, increasing the facility\u2019s storage capacity from 760,000 bushels to 860,000, and features larger grain pits. The average dump time at the elevator has fallen from 15 minutes to just three. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Temperature cables were also installed to monitor grain quality inside the new bins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Staff and farmers alike are glad the elevator is back from the grave, and have high praise for its upgraded space and tech.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cRoquette\u2019s commitment [to] the&#8230; farmers in this area, was just \u2014 it\u2019s there. And we\u2019re not going anywhere. We\u2019re going to keep growing,\u201d explained Mike Falk, the elevator manager.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cI think they\u2019ve done a beautiful job of putting it back. It took two years to do it, but it\u2019s really a nice facility,\u201d added Richard Apt, a local farmer and 60-year customer of the elevator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Apt was given the honor of being the first farmer to dump grain at the site since the rebuild. A framed copy of Apt\u2019s first ticket was presented to him during Thursday\u2019s celebratory luncheon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 WGEM. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA HARPE, Ill. (WGEM) &#8211; It\u2019s been more than two years since a derecho destroyed all but one&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":344353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,6561,169445,169444,2961,169443,224,5337,87938],"class_list":{"0":"post-344352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-celebration","11":"tag-completion","12":"tag-grain-elevator","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-la-harpe","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-rebuild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115465948094991799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}