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(pictures) farming with steel tracks

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14 years 9 months ago #40768 by 98j
Casey!! Very nice. Soft White wheat??? Where do you go with it off the combine?? Yeah, I know, the elevator......where at?? And when it leaves the
elevator, then where?? Ours goes to The Dalles first, then barged to Portland
on the Columbia, then shipped overseas. Good looking 95..........and the Cornbinder looks pretty cherry too. Any pics of the farming?? Better be yellow
paint........:rolleyes: ;)

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14 years 9 months ago #40772 by North Idaho Farmer

North Idaho Farmer

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


Have both actually. Used to use just foam which is what nearly everybody with a decent set up used. Got into a govt conservation program in 2006 that pays good for using GPS so we got one as did several neighbors. GPS is nice on the fields that can be sprayed in a straight AB line but many of the fields are layed out forcing a round and round pattern and foam is usually easier on those fields for me at least.



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14 years 9 months ago #40773 by North Idaho Farmer
Jim- nice pictures must take some skill to get some of that old equipment going I would think.

Casey- very nice pictures of a nice looking 95H, some seriously steep ground there it looks like, just wondering what time of year the farming takes place there what months are planting and harvest?

When you say the wheat crop was pinched by frost do you mean while it was heading out or when?

Once spring comes our wheat is pretty frost resistant until it heads.... July 11th of 2009 saw the temperature 40º at the home place on a hill....at a neighbors place 100ft lower elevation in a draw 1.5 miles away had 29º. Dinged a few acres of our spring wheat pretty good the kernels were just filling and a few draws turned white and heads remained empty.


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14 years 9 months ago #40777 by cr

CR- more nice pictures, some of those cats sure run at odd angles doing that work.



you guys are trying to stay on the side of a hill, this just some flat land work:)

You have to be careful with a uc that has about 50% wear as the tracks don't like to stay on when you are end loading them. When cat first came out with the rubber tracks we shot the belts right off them on the D3 they had IIRC. The 55's and the MT765's stand up much better with the tall center lug. A few hours of that work and salt tracks are dry and usually the bores in the rails get loose before the height shows 50% wear.

One of these days I would like to get out there and get a video of the cats making a ditch as the still pictures give little justice to being almost thrown from the tractor ass the tractor crosses the ridge and heads back down into the bottom of the vee while you are crossing another ditch or turnout.

We also make wide ditches that are about twice as wide were you run one on the top ridge to pack the soil in so it won't leak while the other track ends up in the bottom of the ditch. I have seen people run a motor grader down in the bottom on the wider ditches, but you are asking for trouble if the blade catches something hard.


Even though everything has been bulk since WWII, grain is still traded by the sack "CWT", custom harvesters bill by the sack or ton. I can't seem to find my scans of the pictures old best and Harris combine harvesters that were used on our ranch back into the late 1880's early 1900's. Most of those old wooden harvesters were burned back during the war and the scrap metal was turned in.

Our neighbor had a wooden Harris (Stockton CA Harris, not Massy Harris) that had the sack sewer position up top, and had a slide that ran down one side for unloading. He would bring it out every couple of years to prove a point and run it. I don't think his kids have used since his passing. Wheat was the big crop a century ago out here.. we just don't have the programs that are available to the other growers around this country. We basically need a 3.5 - 4 ton crop to break even.

98J that's an interesting plow you have there, everything around here is a rigid frame, never seen anything like it.
BTW our whear is sold through Port of Stockton in bulk or through Port of Oakland in containers or through a national brand mill in Southern CA that makes Pasta from the wheat grown in the Southern part of the valley.

North Idaho farmer you talked about cleaning the mud from your disc, here is a pic of some dirt clods that were jammed in between the disc blades on our heavy Towner stubble disc with 13" spacing causing the blades to stop turning making it bulldoze dirt. They actually hammered those out with a sledge and also used a 6' bar.

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14 years 9 months ago #40778 by Casey Root
98J/North Idaho Farmer. Thanks for the compliment on the 95H, my brother would have been proud.
That little dab of wheat, about 175 tons, was hauled to the San Miguel mill/elevator. About 20 miles. It's an ancient structure that was built before 1900. I think that some of the wheat was used for seed and the balance went into animal feed. The variety is Yecora Rojo, a hard red spring wheat that is also dwarf. Yecora Rojo is about the only really successful variety to work in this dry climate. With irrigation and plenty of groceries I've harvested 4 tons to the acre. Really made the 6602 groan. Ours is a 12" rainfall on average, starting in mid November and ending in early April, if you were lucky and it didn't stop raining in February. We primarily grew barley because it would mature faster, yields were much higher, and there was a bigger market for the feed grains in the dairies and feed lots of the San Joaquin Valley.

Planting would start dry in late October and go until the first rain. Then we would wait for a flush of weeds and cultivate them down and finish planting. We generally tried to be done seeding by the first of the year. Summer fallow would start in late February or March to prepare or the following falls planting. Summer Fallow was usually done by June first and Harvest would start in the first or second week of June and last until September first. We always had enough cutting for other growers that it kept us busy all summer.

After Harvest it was time to take a little time off then get the summer fallow cleaned up and inject aqua ammonia and get ready to plant again.

We pulled 30' of John Deere 8350 end wheel drills behind a D6C 74A or an HD11 AG. We also had an HD9 with an "N" series engine. Tillage tools were 2 each JD 21" Killifer discs with 26"X1/4" blades an 18' Killifer disc with 24" blades, a 24" JD chisel and an 18' JD chisel, a 32' JD field cultivator w/6" spacing and later a 36" JD rod weeder. 2 6602s and 3, 2 axel trucks with 16' dump beds, and all the other BS that it takes to support the fleet.

That kind of describes dry farming in the upper Salinas Valley of Central CA.

Casey

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14 years 9 months ago #40780 by dewets
Wow guys! Great photo's from all of you!

Makes me want to go out there and shoot those harvest scenes, but I'll have to wait till November this year.

98J, where's you K9 in-cab-supervisor? I don't see him "online" on any of you combine shots...

Somerset West, Cape Town
South Africa

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14 years 9 months ago #40793 by Jd1a
Great pictures.

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14 years 9 months ago #40799 by 98j

Wow guys! Great photo's from all of you!

Makes me want to go out there and shoot those harvest scenes, but I'll have to wait till November this year.

98J, where's you K9 in-cab-supervisor? I don't see him "online" on any of you combine shots...


Have things under control there in South Africa??? Kirby, my in cab supervisor
is right on top of things, keeping me on the straight & narrow:



He is getting pretty cranky with me lately, since we are spending WAY
too much time around the house this winter. His idea of fun is to get
out & burn some diesel........

:cool:

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14 years 9 months ago #40800 by Woody
Casey: Nice looking 95H, what kind of cab did it have? Comfort King made a nice cab for the 95's back in the day. It was tall enough you could stand up and drive. Sure was a lot nicer than having that chaff down you back. Anybody know what ever happend to the Comfort King cab business?? Seems like they built a no-till drill for a short time.
98J Thanks for getting back on the header on the 8010. A bad boy for sure!
Great Pics from all, brings back some good memorys. :)

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14 years 9 months ago #40802 by cr
98j that's quite a big header you got there. 20' seems to be the norm around here.

.

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