Thanks for sending the pictures.


Bruce
What happens if your to late? Run into frost before ripe,or gets dry and runs out of gas before seed is ready. This may be the year to gamble if you have time for it to ripen. Several here planted grain hay 6 weeks after crop insurance cut off and are going to be getting more crop than crop insurance would pay for prevented planting. But the one is the guy that steps in something and it turns gold,I never should have douhted.

"Ray54" wrote:

Thanks for sending the pictures.


Bruce
What happens if your to late? Run into frost before ripe,or gets dry and runs out of gas before seed is ready. This may be the year to gamble if you have time for it to ripen. Several here planted grain hay 6 weeks after crop insurance cut off and are going to be getting more crop than crop insurance would pay for prevented planting. But the one is the guy that steps in something and it turns gold,I never should have douhted.

Ray, we are getting to the point where it could turn off hot and dry any time. Normally our spring crop would have been seeded a month ago. Little plants trying to grow just get zapped with heat, they'll get about 8" high and that's all she wrote.

I've never seen a year like this as far as rain goes, we never complain about rain around here, it's almost always welcome. This year we've had 11.55" since Jan 1, our average for the whole year is around 16". Our soil profile is completely saturated to the point where a small shower gets it as muddy as a if we got a half inch. We just got 1.03 Friday so it's a mess again. I might try to seed if it wasn't so darn muddy. I think it would take at least a week and a half to be fit to seed. Our soil has quite a bit of clay in it so you can really screw up by trying to seed to wet.

I haven't thrown in the towel yet but I do have the towel out of the drawer. Our winter wheat looks great, but it could use some sunshine too.

One thing I have to remember, there's not a thing I can do about it so I'll just take what ever comes.

Sorry for the rant

BP.

This Special Application tractor was in the field between Starbuck and Washtucta, Wa today. It's hooked to a 36' Calkins CultaWeeder. When I was a kid these were everywhere. Still a few out in central Washington yet.

Enjoy

BP.

The picture looks like a D5B SA with the long track option or a seven roller track frame. Likely its a high horse version as well where they bumped the horse power up quite a bit. Like you said Bruce they used to be all over the Palouse until the rubber tracks took over. Good tractor, they will run a long time if you take care of them. The drawback is there hard to move unless you have a transport truck. To bad CAT could not taken there loader technology and built a quad for today's market. The ability to turn under load is where the quads have the advantage or turning uphill.

Thanks for the pics. Good stuff
Woody

I can still close my eyes and see the shop of General Tractor in Pomeroy,Wa. During the winter there would be a row of farm Cats in there. I remember thinking how cool it was that the cab on the newer tractors tilted backwards out of the way so they could put steering clutches in. I was probably 6 or 7. Smelled good in there too.

BP

Working rice stubble,
South of Grimes, Ca in Colusa County, California

I should have taken more pictures of Cats in the field, almost a dinosaur today.

cts

In 1966 I worked on a ranch east of Paso Robles, farming 3,000 acres of mostly summer barley and some winter wheat. The rule on the steep stuff was if you did not see an old tractor carcuss in the bottom of the gully, you can pull that sidehill. I ran a then new D6C, 1965, was 125 HP, can imagine what running a 17A with 225 would be like. I pulled a 24ft chisel plow, then an 18ft JD disc, summer fallow half the ranch, annual rain fall in that area was about 4 inches. Very strict rule was you did not run any Cat (there were 3, the D6C, a D6 5R and a D4 7U SA) higher than 4th gear, even when just moving from one side of the ranch to the other. Thought was that at 5th gear there was just too much wear on the tracks. Now I read here that you guys run 5th and 6th pulling equipment, and pushing snow, so what is different?
Cousin still farms about 300 acres in Penngrove CA, hard black Adobe, disc or plow, D4 5T 4 bottom disc plow, D4C, 6 bottom disc plow and we just added a D6 9U from Republic Washington, it is the first cab cat in the area, it is a great tractor, pulls a 10ft JD stubble disc. No sidehill, just rolling gentle hills and flat ground.
This year the adobe was so hard that if I went any faster than 2nd gear the disc would start hopping on top and not cutting, so most of the ground was in 2nd, some of it had to be tilled 3 times to break it up for a seed bed. I did find that on 2nd pass on the "softer" ground the disc worked well in 3rd and 4th. Now that I know I can run in 5th gear, I will have to give that a try. Raising "organic" silage for near-by dairies.

In about 1980, an area around Rohnert Park CA was called "the seed farm"{, I drove a TD24 pulling a 10 bottom Marvin plow, and a D8 2U pulling 24 feet of "drag" made of 6 rails of railroad track, to break up the adobe. Mostly hay farming, very little grain. Farmed by Grossi Farms, about 600 acres or so, again hard black adobe, would grow anything!

Our farm has been in ag for the past 165 years, my early relatives farmed with horses, my dad bought the first tractor, a fordson, pulling the horse plow. Then he bought a 22 cat and in 1948 he and my uncle moved up to the D4 5T, a military unit they got pretty cheap, it still runs, needs a little work though, someone removed the bottom of the main air cleaner, why we have no idea. Anyway that is my story.

Tom, my Dad had the very same rule, NO FIFTH GEAR!! That applied to the 4G and the 7U, the D4E had a farming 5th at 5.6 mph so of course it was ok. 4th in the 7U was about the same as 5th in the E.

My D6C SA has a six speed tranny with a farming 6th at 5.6 also. I would say the older tractors had a “road gear” in them that the later SA tractors might not have had. I would often run in sixth at 1800rpm when cultaweeding because I liked to run at 5 mph for that operation.


BP.

Tom, who's ranch did you work on in the '60's?

"Paso wrote:

Tom, who's ranch did you work on in the '60's?

The "WORK" ranch out on Hog Canyon road. Worked the fields and a herd of 600 Herefords. 12,000 acre ranch all the way to the top of the hill above Parkfield. Pushed a lot of brush up there with the D6 5R.