North Idaho Farmer-
Great theme for a calendar, really. Wonderful photos-you have a real knack there.

Nice job and thanks for posting.

Great photos keep them coming.My part of California grain farming is much the same.I see part of your operation is no-till and part full tillage what makes the difference?Here it seems it is one way or the other.Soil Conservation promoted no-till here in the 8o's then CRP,vineyards,and ranchetts and a new directer and they forgot about grain farmers.Is that the same drill doing no-till and conventional planting?What crop is being harvested in picture with the one harvester?Thank you for sharing,always interesting to learn how thing are done else where.
Ray

"Jim wrote:

Great Pictures, thanks for posting them. I like the guidance and mapping system in the Cat. Probably kind of hard to put on an auto steer though.
Jim

Thanks,

Yep wont be any autosteer on these old girls! We are the only ones with one in an old cat that I know of, several people have them in newer tractors for spraying and fertilizing. With our hills and irregular shaped fields autosteer is unlikely to be popular here. The GPS we got for spraying where we run 60' and its hard to see the foam mark sometimes. It comes in useful seeding no-till with hard ground and high residue where you cant see the marker from the drill. I am honestly not a big fan of it I prefer to drive by my one sight as I have always taken pride in driving straight with a limited overlap, some other guys say they will never run without the GPS guidance again.

"wimmera wrote:

Thanks for posting great photos bring back good memories our son worked in south Idaho, American Falls in 03. Much drier than your area I believe We spent a month there and had a great time hope to do it again.
I found it hard to believe where a Cat could sow crops they let me loose on a 55 challenger, I could see where someone had been before and survived so we went for it. All our area is flat so a big difference
Not real sure about your winter temps a bit fresh for me I had never seen snow till we went to Idaho in September. I don't think you would like our summer 43C here this week, would melt your snow in no time.
Cheers wimmera farmer(Victoria Aust)

Yes that is a very different area of Idaho, they farm in the valleys, we farm up on the ridges. That area only gets about 10 inches of rain a year so about 1/3 of what we get here. Those challenger 55s are popular here, know some people that got a pair of them to replace their old steel tracked D5s a few years ago.

As for the snow we usually can see it fall 9 months out of the year, we often have two seasons, summer and winter. In 2008 the day the last of winter snow melted off the ground was May 16th it was 92ºF that afternoon. Another year 2003 I think it was we struggled to get our farming done all spring with cold wet weather and in late may we got 4" of snow one night, a week later it was 90º

And no I dont think I would like that heat, I love the cold and snow, I dont even mind driving in it which most people hate negotiating the steep windy roads around here. (all the towns are at the bottoms of the canyons)
BTW I had some relatives visit australia in July of 08, the amusing thing is that it got colder here one summer night than it was down there during your winter. We dropped below freezing one July night, hurt our crops some.

This was how much was plowed off the road in Feb 09- had 124" fall that winter ( I am a weather nut and keep daily records)

"D6 wrote:

Wonderfull pics , Thankyou for them!. Whish we had that river as close by ,to us, here in Sunny, dry {mostly}Queensland,OZ !!. I still think those Cats are the cheapest way to work big areas. If the soil aint to bad on pin and bush!. Our creek flat black-soil and black soil Darling-Downs soil here dont wear tracks or pads at all . But tyres wear fast!!..dont know why , but thats the truth of it !!...Regards, pete. ps.. still use 9U for lot of farming ground here!& 3T.

Thanks, our soil is clay loam so they last awhile. West of here there is sandy soil that they run cats in that wear everything out fast.

"Ron wrote:

I'll bet those cats sound good with the long stacks on them although you probably cannot hear the bark in the enclosed cab.I see that one of the cats might have an A/C compressor sticking out of the engine compartment,do you have A/C in them or just filtered air or what?
I can see it could get boring after a few days chasing tracks around the vast area that must be tilled.Thanks for the great pics.Ron G

Those cabs are not very soundproof so yeah you can hear the engine pretty good, it does seem to block the track noise pretty well though. One time I could cleary hear the engine noise from the D4D 4 miles away with at least two of the neighbors tractors running in between us close by.

Yep AC in all three, makes for a fairly comfortable ride.

"Richard~J~W" wrote:

Top class photos there, scenery is amazing too......must be a pleasure to get up in the morning, fire up the machine and head off to the fields.

What brand of cab is that? some kind of after-market variety?

Yep really enjoy it,especially the last few years now that grain prices are more reasonable.

Yes cat started putting factory cabs on the SA machines in 1976 or so when they came out with the D4E, D5B, and D6D so all the older ones had add on cabs.

The D6B and D4D have fiberglass cabs, henely is the maker I believe. The D6C has a steel cab. There were several locals that would put cabs on them, mostly square but ours are hexagonal.

Here is what the factory cabs look like, a couple cats for sale at nearby equipment dealers.

"Ray54" wrote:

Great photos keep them coming.My part of California grain farming is much the same.I see part of your operation is no-till and part full tillage what makes the difference?Here it seems it is one way or the other.Soil Conservation promoted no-till here in the 8o's then CRP,vineyards,and ranchetts and a new directer and they forgot about grain farmers.Is that the same drill doing no-till and conventional planting?What crop is being harvested in picture with the one harvester?Thank you for sharing,always interesting to learn how thing are done else where.
Ray

Thanks, it would take a very lengthy response to really explain how things work for us. Basically understand that we plant crops two times of the year, one is in September/October which brings the winter wheat and winter peas/lentils up and gets them a couple inches tall before they go dormant all winter. The spring crops are planted March-June depending on weather (we plant as soon as the ground is dry enough) Our rainfall pattern here is such that we are very wet in the spring and then during late summer it gets bone dry, in the fall it starts to rain again and soak the soil. Our soil is high in clay which means that after being saturated and it dries out very hard.

So to answer your question we actually no-till based on season not based on the land (every field will get tillage at least every few years) erosion can be a problem over winter and into the spring for fall seeded crops so there has been a push for no-till wheat, many started 15-20 years ago. Most people use double disk no-till drills for fall no-tilling which have coulters to break the hard ground and cut up some residue, we see no yield decrease with our coventional drill no-tilling under most conditions, it does have problems in hard ground and if it gets wet the residue will not cut up very well. We have looked into buying a no-till drill but it is an expense we have been able to avoid so far.

As for the spring crops there is no one at all around here stretching northwest 40 miles that does spring no-till. Leaving residue prevents the ground from warming up and drying out and it is a big issue. So we do tillage. South of here it is a little drier and just a different area that some are now 100% no-till for all crops, the most successful of these seem to use hoe drill instead of disk drills. The high disturbance openers blacken the ground up instead of placing seed under a mat of residue.

First pic is of one neighbors set of no-tills in the background.

Second is borrowed from member 98J showing the hoe type air drill I was mentioning that may be the only way to to good spring no-till here.






and that is lentils being harvested, we put about 1/3 of the place in winter wheat, 1/3 spring wheat, and 1/3 legumes (dry peas, lentils, and garbanzo beans) each year. One thing that may amaze you is that our wheat will do 85bu/acre on a typical year, have done 115bu once, all dryland with no summerfallow.

lentil seed, all exported to places like Turkey and India which provides them with a cheap form of protein.

Hi Northern Idaho Farmer. Thanks for the great pictures do you have any of your land in the CRP program. what type of drum do you have in your J Deere harvesters are they peg type ? Thanks once again for the very interesting pictures. Atlas

Great pictures....thanks for posting:)
Speaking of 98J, what happened to him?...used to post regularly but haven't seen him in ages. Kinda miss his pictures.