HI Guys NIF the J Deere planter how wide is it, and how many acres can it cover in a day. BLEEDINRED what type of bird goes for mature grapes , i have never seen nets on grapes in Californiam i guess they really could hit the bottom line if they could reach that juicy fruit. cheers Atlas

Atlas- that JD 455 drill is 35' wide on 7.5" inch spacing, it is the most common drill around these parts now, almost everybody replaced the older conventional drills of every brand with 455s. We may replace our great plains folding drill with one of those 455s in a few years.

Since he is not putting down any starter fertilizer with that drill acres covered in a day are easily 150+.

Another guy 10 miles or so down the ridge seeding in May with a similar drill.

Great shot there NIF of that JD with the tracks spread out and the planter.
Would you have any more closer shots of the tractor and drill?
Thanks.

If someone wanted to make a Calender of Farming with Tracks there are more than enought high quality pics on this thread to do so, thanks to all of those who keep this thread alive, keep up the good work.

OldTracks- sorry, no I dont have any more pics of that rig.

chriscokid- I am doing a 2011 calender for sure with my pics, I did one for 09 with some of my scenery pics and was going to do one of farming pics for 2010 but did not get around to it. There is a website that you can upload pictures to and make your own calender and then they print it and ship it to you for a total of about $20 I think. The one I did and will do again is just the standard 12 month calender one big pic for each month. Then once the year is over it works good to dismantle the calender and put a frame around the pics.

If anyone want to use any of my pics for something like that it is fine with me.

Still not done with fall work here, 2 hours of spraying left and been sitting for over a week due to rain, heavy rain last night but looks like we might get a few days of sun this week to finish up if it gets dry enough. Still some guys with plowing and chiseling left to do this fall but they may luck out and get some nice weather to finish before winter hits.

I posted some of these before but some I have not. They are scenery pics of the palouse I took over the past year or so, some from last fall and the rest from this year. Mostly on the Idaho side near Moscow/Genesee or just over the line into Washington but the ones from the air are from Kamiak and Steptoe Buttes headed up towards Spokane. Not as good as some of palouse pics you can find on the net but not bad for auto settings on a camera like mine without all the fancy equipment.

Spring peas on the flat, lentils and/or garbs recently seeded on the hill and the dark green is winter wheat



Good looking barley field





From steptoe butte late June







East towards Idaho





Looking at steptoe butte from kamiak





Much of the land in this picture close by is/was owned by some distant cousins of mine who had a pretty large palouse farm.

















Strip crop last spring with winter wheat above and below spring planted legume



same place this fall, wheat across the slope and spring crop will go above and below on plowed ground.















enjoy!

Hi NIF What fantastic scenic photoes. With all that green around i guess there is lotts of starter fertilizer used ? Looks like some growers use tramlines as we call them for sprayer and fertilzer wheels. Just 2 more questions the rubber tracked JOHN DEERE is the wide track for stability or row crop work. The undulating ground, is it the sme depth of working soil on high and low ground, or is the high ground les soil due to erosian which we get a lott of on a rainy season. thanks again for the pictures . An old timer once told me the nearest one will ever get to god is working on the land? cheers Atlas

Thanks for the photos NIF. Kind of pulls me back to the 70's.

I was curious about the 455 grain drill so I went to the Deere site to check it out. Pretty neat machine. I would love to have had that when I was farming. Then, I went to the "Build Your Own" section of the site, hack hack hack, $72,000 for a 35 footer. After being out of the market for 25 years, that is absolute sticker shock. I know that is suggested retail price but if it is popular, I'm sure the dealers are pretty close.

To show how things have changed, I think we bought 3 ea 10 foot, 8350 drills with grass seed attachments for "Fargo", made a squadron hitch all for $12,000 to $14,000.

A neighbor had a benchmark for the economic state of agriculture that I always thought interesting. It was as follows! In 1973/74 it took 6 weened calves to buy the best GMC 3/4 ton pickup on the market or that same pickup could be bought with one truck and trailer load (27 tons) of grain. My, haven't things changed.

Thank you again for getting this thread started.

Casey

NIF; great pictures and thank you so very much for posting them and keeping this excellent thread on the front page. This thread, "Farming with steel tracks" is the reason I joined ACMOC. More, more please when you have the time.

Now where oh where is 98j, our good buddy from OR?

I want to mention to anyone that is looking for a farming cat that I know of a late model Cat D5B 26X for sale in excellent condition. It is a rare find since it was very well cared for and everything that can be has been fixed/replaced and the tractor was even washed/waxed regularly. Many consider the D5B to be one of the best ag cats ever built. If anyone is interested send me a private message or post here and I will put you in touch.



Thanks for the comments, that is what keeps me posting. I think I will re post some of my favorite cat pics in a couple days in case anyone new is viewing the thread and to keep this thread on page one in hopes that others will wander by and post.

Atlas- some of the rubber tracked tractors used here are considered row crop even though there are no row crops grown. They work better well on hills I am told. Yes there is often less topsoil on the tops of palouse hills due to erosion and the way the hills were formed from wind blown soil.

Casey- yep farming sure aint what it used to be. There is a reason many guys run older equipment, it is not because we want to! We bought our great plains folding drill in 1989 with dry fertilizer boxes, 7" spacing, and one marker it was 25,000. Last year there was a 35' 455 for sale with one season on it for 52,000. Many guys have gone to 10" spacing on those drills so the cost is a little lower and most used ones are 25-40k. Actually pretty cheap compared to some of the fancy air drills.







Oldtracks- I sure hope 98j wanders by again and posts up some more pics, he has a real talent with a camera.