Allan is the wheat in?

Did you get the wheat all planted? Or did the ground freeze up on ya?

Been a cold year hasn't it?

Gary

Oh yeah,

All up, stooled out and ready fer winter.

Spent the day yesterday moving all that diesel equipment back home 'cause I don't think there are many warm days left.

Still gotta haul 23 stacks of hay and clean out 3 corrals. No rest fer us old guys. :>)

Allan

Back in the late 50's and early 60's I remember traveling to farm equipment dealerships in your part of the country and seeing them using large sweep rakes and stacker and making stacks in the field.As I remember this was done with horse power. They had a way of loading these stacks onto wooden skids and moving them to ranch headquarter. I know you would drive on a highway and here would be a stack moving on it. Is my memory playing games on me? Do they still do this? The dealer I called on was Kennedy Imp. in Valentine.Nebr. They handled Plymouth cars and several lines of farm machinery.
gitrib

Oh fer sure,

From about the 1st of October thru the winter, you'll see hay moving around here.

Lotsa cattle to feed in these parts.

Allan

we need some pics allan! It has a been awhile. By the way, that buick I was needing help on a month or so ago... harmonic balancer. Frustrating to say the least lol

Pretty sure the name of the dealer in Valentine you're thinking of was actually Keeley Implement. They were right on highway 20 towards the east edge of town. I mainly remember them selling Allis Chalmers tractors and various implements during their last years of operation. There's a plumbing supply store at the location now.

Here at the ranch up until we got a chain type stackmover in the mid '70s, we moved our stacks from the meadow to the stackyards by having a long cable with a large I-beam in the middle of it, and a tractor hooked to each end(WD-9 and 560 being the two I remember from my youth in the 60's-70's, back in the 50's they useed surplus army cletracks). A tractor would go around each side of the stack and then they'd just slide it on the ground to where it needed to be. Of course, we didn't slide 'em on highways!

Ron: I put my thinkng cap on. I remember two things. I was with New Idea Farm Equipment and they were my dealer. They sold the heck out of mowers the 30 and 30A and for some reason they would sell a single row Cornpicker once in a while. I was calling on them one time and they yelled at me to get in the service truck and we took off. Some farmer had got is hand and arm caught in the husking rolls on a picker. They took me along because they figured I knew the quicket way to take it apart. It was not a fun thing. You just do what you have to do. In fact it was down right horrable. It was amazing what this man had done to not get pulled completely in the machine.
gitrib

Wow- no wonder you don't remember for sure the name- that must have been quite an experience! Must have been someplace to the north or northeast of town that the guy got stuck in the picker, since once you get a few miles south it's all sandhills and hay/cattle country...most of the corn is grown up on the "table" north of the Niobrara river. Not much corn raised down this way, although there's a few scattered places that have some. Anyway, it was nice to read about someplace "local" here that existed "back then". I'm kind of a local history enthusiast and enjoy reading anything that went on.

Cornpickers can be nasty I'm sure, but most of the "one armed" old timers I knew growing up had lost hands etc in the cable winches that were mounted on tractors and used to winch haystacks onto haysleds in the wintertime when things were too slick for the tractor to pull 'em on otherwise. All the work that was done back then to load a stack of hay(and I got in on it when I was younger), not to mention pitching it off by hand, sure makes a guy appreciate the way we feed round bales nowadays- not having to get outta the tractor except to open a gate or break ice on a tank...