Since the current Hillco levelers max out at 27%, then from time to time........



.......the machine will not be exactly on a totally even keel......

Thanks everyone for making this such a great thread, lots of great info and pics added by many people.

Woody- yep the good old rahco style stuck around on the JD 9632 up to 1999, I have seen the new hillco and rahco levelers both, the rahco seems to be a better set up for the steep stuff but they are more expensive I was told. Talked to some guys in the palouse that replaced their 3 6622s with a acculevel 35% JD 9860 and it cuts all the really steep stuff 45% + just fine.

98J- nice pics glad you kept a few cats and JDs in there to balance out the red machines.

Well I couldnt resist finding a few more pics hidden back in the picture files.

Just getting started one morning last May, the surface had dried out after a rain but it was pulling up mud balls so I had to set the disk out a bit.

The same spot, looking the other direction, after disking it was time for the cultivator which was parked right here up on the level at the edge of the field

In this one you will notice two things, one is that it was still a bet wet so there was mud built up on the packer wheels. I was stopping every now and then and would raise the drill and knock the mud off all the closers. The other thing is the pitchfork on the back of the drill, had to stop and spread the pea residue that had clumped up after disking, chiseling, and harrowing.

Doing a little no-till, with our hard ground turning corners can bend the openers so we raise up the drill on the corners.

Discovered that there was a short in the wiring to the lights so I had to shut down right after this pic was taken close to 9pm.

Spraying a little CSP food plot

Stopped for a pressure adjustment, assure 2 on lentils

Rolling wheat stubble on one of the hottest days of the year 97ºF if I remember right.



Burning some grass. In this case it was just some of the neighbors CRP that we put back into production. My area is a major bluegrass seed growing area, we dont do any but a few neighbors do, the grass is swathed at night during july and then harvested with pickup headers on the combines a week later. The grass stubble is all burned in September which stimulates growth so they can get 6-8 years of production out of a field before putting in back in wheat/legumes. It has become more difficult to do field burning in recent years and Washington state has outlawed it completely. Idaho tried the same thing for one year but thankfully the law got changed. Still restrictions make us get multiple permits and we can only burn weekdays during the middle of the day.

Usually multiple farmers group together to burn fields so in this case we had two neighbors come over, ended up with a few water trucks along with a slug of rigs like my 4 wheeler, good for getting the blaze going and checking the perimeter.

Harrowing to get a little mulch dust layer set up to hold the moisture in over the rest of the summer.

There you go guys, I appreciate the number of people who have contributed to this thread and made it very enjoyable to come back to every night.

The sacking of grain on the combine was the norm in coastal California until WWII when jut(the fabric burlap sacks were made from)was in short supply.My grandfather brought a new JD36B I think in 46 or 47, the first new combines the dealer had to sell after the war.It must have come with the sacking set up rather than a bulk bin as there is sack dump shoot still in the barn here on the ranch.Also there were a few hold outs for years that wanted to store there grain in sacks,so they had hooks on a small door on the bulk truck to hold the sacks as they were filled out of the truck instead of on the combine. Thankfully everyone was over this before my time,but doing repairs on a combine would get my uncle started on telling the younger generation about the good old days and loading 120 sacks of wheat weighing from 120 to 150 lbs on the three axle truck by himself if they had been piled.I under stand the mid west was always mostly bulk,but in the northwest when did bulk become the favored way,or was it only some crops like peas and bean that were sacked on the combine?
Ray

Ray WWII was about the switching point around here I think. Actually the majority of farms including my families didnt switch to combines until the 40s so there were not alot of combines that were set up for sacks. It was all done with binder and threshing machine in the 30s.

98J & North Idaho Farmer:
Great pics guys, is that a 35 foot header on the 8010 Case IH? Currious if it is a draper header as well. One of our neigbors runs an 8010 level land dualed up with a big draper head on it. 98J how does that 8010 compair to the old 1670 and 1470' on the steep stuff. No doubt it will out cut one of them.These new combines have come along way.

North Idaho Farmer

On your sprayer, how are you gauging your pass width? Do you have foam markers or are you using GPS?

Non-existant user wrote:

Ray WWII was about the switching point around here I think. Actually the majority of farms including my families didnt switch to combines until the 40s so there were not alot of combines that were set up for sacks. It was all done with binder and threshing machine in the 30s.

Binders and threshing machines? Here are a couple from this last summer. We do some for our little show here on Labor Day.
Jim

"Woody" wrote:

98J & North Idaho Farmer:
Great pics guys, is that a 35 foot header on the 8010 Case IH? Currious if it is a draper header as well. One of our neigbors runs an 8010 level land dualed up with a big draper head on it. 98J how does that 8010 compair to the old 1670 and 1470' on the steep stuff. No doubt it will out cut one of them.These new combines have come along way.

Woody! A 36 foot flex draper actually ( made for CaseIH by Mac Don) Just the ticket for keeping this Bad Boy ( the 8010) full. Everything comes in to the separator head first, so that helps keep the capacity up. Not exactly cheap......
when the boss bought the 8010 back in '05, the platform alone was a tad over
50 large. So.......it damn well better work good.



The 8010 will go on some pretty nasty stuff, but it is different than the old
full leveling machines like the 1470/1670. Gotta be REAL careful about heading
down hill, especially after you get some weight on board. The back end tends to fall off down the hill, something that I think could be helped with
some diamond treads. Keep in mind, this is my opinion after watching this machine for the last 5 seasons. They never let me run it ( perfectly happy in the 'ol 1670) When the "16" retires, the feeling is that a few spots on the ranch won't be harvested any more. As far as capacity goes......well it's just
scary. Never have got 300 acres a day out of it, mainly because about the
time we get in sight of that (300 acres by the 8010 alone) we run out of field
and have to move. No more snoozing for the truck drivers. Here it is, slightly
out of level, munching through some 60+ bu wheat:



Grain monitor was reading in triple digits down in here:

I'm finally figuring this out. These photos were taken on the last day of my brothers last harvest. He always liked the looks of a '69/'70 95H and when he started to hobby farm (only about 250 acres per year) he bought one. Besides that they were real cheap. For him the whole goal was to farm as cheap as possible and have some fun. It was his break from the fire dozer that he ran for CDF.

This crop was grown on a 3 year rotation, one year pasture, one year summerfallow and then planted. No fertilizer or spray. Was probably the best non irrigated wheat stand I ever saw in our area. It probably would have done 70 bushels if it hadn't been pinched by frost. The photos were taken at the top end of Keys Canyon at about the 2,000 foot elevation

This was the last time I ran a combine, July 2003, Kind of miss it some times. This was also a step back in time for me as the last machine I had run 20 years earlier was my 6602 when we were farming like we had good sense. I grew up on a 1959 95H so to run this one was like putting on a comfortable slipper.

North Idaho Farmer, thank you for starting this thread. It brings back a lot of great memories and a few tough ones too. Maybe If I have any luck and you are of a mind and need the help I could give you a hand with one of your future harvests.

Casey