Hi NIF You mention tile drains ? Plastic seems to have replaced tiles in the UK, even so some of the old tile systems are 80 years old dug in by hand and still working efficiantly. Do you tile just low lying areas or whole fields. Sloping areas do they have to be drained to take surphase water or do you have underground springs. One other question do use stone above the drains. all the best Atlas

Atlas- we use plastic drain tile, it isnt extremely common to tile around here most farmers just drive around wet spots on bad years, usually they are only a problem in the spring. We put drain tiles in low spots and flat areas and occasionally on springs in the sides of hills. Most ground with much slope drains well except for those natural springs. Our lower elevation ground has so much rock in it it is almost impossible to tile so there are bad wet spots some years.

Another thing us and a couple other farmers have done around here is put gully plugs in old grass waterways. Most of our waterways have seasonal creeks that flow pretty good for just a few weeks of the year. A dam or sometimes two or three in the same draw are constructed and the water is put into a solid 6" or larger pipe and runs down and out of the field. This makes it so we can add smaller fields together and not farm around the grass waterways. We have put in three on our place to make two of our fields bigger but one neighbor has done them on nearly every field. Shown is a gully plug when dry and when under full runnoff from rain and melting snow on frozen ground. In the second picture there was too much water for a 6" pipe to carry away so it overflowed the dam for a short period of time.

Many of our grass waterways have too much water moving down them to make the gully plug work easily so they will remain in place.

We started some weed control between the rows where we are going to plant the walnuts. To quickly knock down the weed between the trees before planting we used the 7u and a 14 foot CC cultivator.






Holes have been drilled and the crew is placing the trees.





Planting crew places the tree and tree stake.



Planted trees awaiting pruning, painting and a tree wrap around the bottom.

Hi Guys. Running out of farm pictures, more to come later.

1. Some of Joe Heidricks farm trucking.




2. Ex Heidricks 2 ton Holt ends up in UK.




3. Some farm buildings in Shropshire - potato store.




4. Potato box transport.




5. Preparing sugar beet ground for planting with 4040.




6. Harvester ready for work.




7. Struggling in the mud.




8. End of season finished.




9. Henry Keisers Cat diesel conversion ends up in UK.




10. Easy way to unfreeze solid tracks.




11. 6 Cat Sixty's in UK.




12. My son grows a beard!

IronAppraiser. I not into orchards, but find California methods most interesting. why are bottom of trees rapped is it to stop vermin rabbits etc from chewing bottom of rootstocks what is the paint for. What is the life expectancy of a freshley planted orchard. NIF thanks for the explanation of the drainage. Grass contoured i presume is to stop erosian gulleys. cheers Alas

could you explain the pic of the tires burning on the tracks, how does this free up the tracks?

Heating the track breaks the rust bond between frozen parts.

A bit too big for a rosebud torch to make much headway!

"Atlas" wrote:

IronAppraiser. I not into orchards, but find California methods most interesting. why are bottom of trees rapped is it to stop vermin rabbits etc from chewing bottom of rootstocks what is the paint for. What is the life expectancy of a freshley planted orchard. NIF thanks for the explanation of the drainage. Grass contoured i presume is to stop erosian gulleys. cheers Alas

The trees have half gallon milk cartons (unused that have printing errors) on the bottoms to protect against herbicide spray drift. The white paint is to prevent sun burning of the young trees as the trees do not have foliage to protect the trunks. It can get very hot here in May with temperatures over 100 degrees. We are located between Red Bluff and Chico on the east side of the valley near Deer Creek.

The life expectancy of the orchard is 40 to 50 years however we have some well maintained walnut orchards that are still productive into their sixties.

How did Heidricks 2 ton Holt end up in the UK? Great pictures of the beet harvesters. Your son's 2 looks great. What part of the UK are you in?

Atlas- yes erosion control is one of the main purposes for grass waterways in the draws. Shown is one of our problem spots for erosion ditches, one reason for not putting a grass waterway in here before was because it would split the field up so small that it would be difficult to farm part of it with wide implements. This field was no-tilled four years in a row before this picture was taken last spring. We disked the draw in the fall to fill in the ditch and harrowed straw onto it but it still eroded even with all the residue. Last fall we seeded about 20 acres of it all to grass as part of a conservation program so this hill and draw will not be farmed anymore.

This pic shows a problem with grass waterways, I took this pic just a couple days ago on a field waiting to be planted. The water hit the edge of the waterway and ran down the edge in the field creating a ditch until there was a low spot and it could flow into the waterway. This is caused by a tillage berm, moldboard plowing either leaves a dam or ditch next to the waterway which is a problem. Fields like this we usually chiseled at least one round to prevent the berm.

criscokid The tracks of the Atlas 60 were solid. it took 70 tons pressure by Finnings our Cat dealer to get masterpin out. Looking into the archives Davis University it appeared this cat had not moved a track for 50 years? I tried acetyline heat on each link a wast of time so i rang an old timer Fred Heidrick senior and he said lite a fire but take the tracks of fisrt? and every link was derusted with no damage.You cant beat the old timers for Knowledge. IronAppraiser Iworked for the Heidrick family in the 1960s this is a very long story ,however i returned for a visit in 1989 and at that time Fred and Joe seniors had a new hobby old cats and Joe had recently passed away. I asked Joe junior will they sell me an old cat and they said ok . i bought 4 60s and the holt which are all running in the uk. however the bigest challenge has was the Henry J Kaiser Atlas cat 60 running. I will never ever attemt to get a worn out air start Atlas engine running again? Ithink i have done my share of preserving AMERICAN history. Will it ever come home ?. NIF thanks for your pictures of erosion problems. great explanatory pictures. IronAppraiser thanks for the information on orchards having lived in Woodland i now Know why i see a lott of white paint splashed about. I live in the middlle of the uk county of shropshire average rainfall 25 inhes. 250 feet above sea level. cheers Atlas