We started with horse power.
PH with his 2 sons, Vernon and Lloyd, farmed the original 145 acres with their favorite horses, Baldy and Tony.
The 2 boys, raised a generation before extensive mechanization, would pick corn by hand after school every day in Oct, Nov & Dec as one of many labor intensive jobs on the farm.
Corn fueled life on the farm, both inside and out. Ila would use corn cobs to fuel the kitchen stove and she knew it took 15 corn cobs to make the perfect angel food cake.
Despite being awarded a full scholarship to Purdue, Lloyd stayed on the farm during the depression years to work with PH and assure the family farm was secure. In the early 1940s, he took over farm operations and immediately began to mechanize the farm. purchasing his first tractor, a 1939 John Deere B.
Our Harvesting History
Mechanized Picking
The first mechanized corn picker on the farm was a one-row 1945 JD corn picker (whole ear only) that Lloyd mounted on the drawbar of the JD B. This was a revolutionary step to increase the corn acres on the farm. Ear corn was stored in a traditional drive-through wood-structure corn crib and 2 circular wire cribs to allow for natural drying during the winter months.
In 1963, Lloyd upgraded to a two-row Oliver pull-type corn picker. He used a separate pull-type combine to harvest small grains like wheat and oats. Once each summer, family and neighbors would help empty the corn cribs and shell the corn with a separate shelling machine. Corn along with a mixture of oats, wheat, and supplements were mixed for dairy cow feed in addition to hay and silage.
First Combine
In 1973, Lloyd purchased the first self-propelled JD4400 combine that picked and shelled corn in the same operation as well as being able to harvest small grains. The combine cut down on the manual labor required. Harvesting can be a dirty business as you churn up the dust from each dried crop. This enclosed cab model meant you could stay warm in the cold fall weather, harvest without inhaling the dust storm, and not look like a coal miner at the end of the day.
As the farm acreage expanded, Lloyd changed his planter and combine equipment to “six-row” equipment with the JD6600 Combine to increase throughput by fifty percent. Vane would often try to negotiate working extra hours on the combine or tractor instead of milking the cows.
Dream it.
In 1981, Lloyd purchased a JD6620 combine with A/C and additional productivity features. Greater separation and grain tank size meant we could go further, faster.
Lloyd upgraded to a 9000 series combine in the mid ‘90s; the very same model Vane helped design at JD Harvester a decade earlier. While the mechanical roar of the JD6620 was like being at a rock concert with the engine next to the cab, the JD9400 cut the noise in half and added more efficient threshing and capacity. Lloyd made sure to call out any concerns he had with the function of the machine to see what those JD engineers were thinking.
Recently, Vane upgraded to a JD9560 Rotary combine, to increase capacity with a newer machine that includes GPS technology to measure real time yield data.
Current Operations
Today, we continue to farm corn and soybeans, rotating each year with good care for proper fertilizer, PH, and overall nutrient balance. Most of our commodities are sold through our local farm cooperative located in Union Mills, just twelve miles from the farm. We are forward hedging (i.e. selling) our commodities in several tranches throughout the year prior to harvest, using a calculus of locking in a positive margin, while assessing the impact of supply/demand, politics (i.e. tariffs), oil prices, economy and weather on commodity prices. The cooperative works with large national firms like Cargill and ADM to transport the commodities via rail to processing plants and transport through the great lakes and down the Mississippi. Our corn is used for human consumption (largest source of sugar in the US), cattle feed, plastics and ethanol, just to name a few uses. Soybeans are also prevalent in your local grocery in different forms such as meat substitutes, soy oil, soy sauce, soymilk; but, the majority of the soybean meal is used for poultry and livestock feed. There are many industrial uses for soybeans, such as insulation, composite car parts, paint, ink and wood adhesives. The US exports about 15% of its corn production and 50% of its soybean production each year.