Grandpa and Minnesota Power and Light

In the desk downstairs that belonged to Grandpa Janson (the one we were not supposed to touch),  I found this photo of some sort of harvest-related activity--theres a hopper, and a belt, and two large taped-together tubes like stove pipes going left and right.  Were they shooting out those piles of straw?  And, was that an electric generator (lower right)?
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When I asked mom about it years later, she said it was the Janson farm, and grandpa was trying to prove that farms could definitely be electrified--not only lights in the house and barn, but also this kind of thing--silo filling, shredding,  feed distribution, milking and milk handling, barn cleaning-- there were endless possibilities.  She said Grandpa worked with the power company to get an electric line strung to his farm, and proved that electricity was not dangerous.

Stearns REA history

Minnesota Power & Light history

Hm.  It only takes a little research to discover this was almost certainly a crock.  Once towns and cities had it, farmers were begging for electricity.  What other  occupation but a farm took quite so much back-breaking labor every day?  Check this article from Popular Mechanics called "Electricity to end Farm Drudgery".  WHAT farmer wouldn't want less labor?  And even without electricity, farmers had used steam power for bigger tasks like threshing for years.  Besides, grandpa's farm was 17 miles from Little Falls.  If they'd wanted or needed a demo farm, there were plenty within a mile or two of the dam.  So, what was this a photo of?
Probably it was grandpa proving that he didn't NEED to go buy a big fancy piece of equipment like this one Larry found:

(I'd love to be proved wrong about our conclusions re: this cool family story, but.....)