Trip to Garden City, KS

On my trip up to Garden City I stopped to see a couple custom harvesters to drop some parts of for them. I also got to see some beautiful scenery too.

Here is one of the New Holland combines unloading on the go. Actually it just finished to be completely accurate. This crew is out of Canada and they have two combines, both New Holland.


These pictures are from an overlook on the side of the road. I decided to stop and take a look around and then took these pictures.








Post by Kyle

Cattle Yards

In this area of Kansas there are feedlots everywhere. There are feedlots all the way around Garden City, so no matter which way the wind blows here it smells like cows. Some of them are average sized and others are huge. The one in the pictures is a bigger one. I saw a sign in front of one of the entrances to a feedlot that said they had over 11,000 cattle there that they were feeding daily. Each one of these outfits has there own grain elevator located on the premises. These pictures were taken from the road obviously but they had a pull off on the highway to look over the feedlot.







Post by Kyle

Grain Elevators in Enid, OK

Ok, sorry it has taken so long to get these descriptions up. We only had reservations for the first night at the Holiday Inn Express here in Garden City then Tuesday night we had to move to the Best Western and now we are back at the Holiday Inn for the rest of our time here.

These first four pictures are of one of the elevators that were in Enid. I took these pictures because the elevators were huge or at least the biggest I have ever seen before.





The rest of these besides the second one are all of the same elevator. This was the biggest one in the area by far. If you look at the second to last picture close enough you can see a semi on the scales to give you an idea of just how big it really was. In the last picture we are about a half mile away from the elevator and I couldn't get the entire thing into the picture.









That is really all the description I can give for these pictures.

Post by Kyle

Dealership Equipment

Well the last couple of days I have been working in the trailer all day selling parts. That means I haven't had a chance to get any pictures. I have gone on two parts runs but the first one was late at night so it was just about dark by the time I got there to the field. I didn't make it back to the hotel around 11 that night, that made for a 15 hour day. I have taken a few pictures at the dealership we are located at so I thought I would put them up for everyone.

These first two are of a self-propelled hay conditioner. I climbed inside of this one to check it out and I really think dad should get one of these. I think it is about 15 feet wide and it has air-ride suspension on it so it will cut pretty fast. There are a lot of these in this area. I think there are 4 or 5 brand new ones at the dealership.




This is just a center pivot mower but what I thought was interesting is that it doesn't have a PTO shaft. If you look at the front of the hitch it has a pump that hooks up to the PTO. That hydraulic pump is what powers the whole machine.


This is obviously not at the dealership but I thought it was cool looking. I went on a parts delivery to Helena, OK and on my way there I saw this on the side of the road. There is a little veterans memorial by the road and it had this huge anchor with it. I took the picture of it when I was on my way back to the trailer.


We got a little rain here earlier this week and so the fields have been a little soft but the custom harvesters don't like waiting so they kept trying to get in to cut the wheat. With that combination we had 3 combines in one day get stuck, two of which they had to get a bulldozer to get them out of the hole they were in. One of the combines that got stuck was the demo machine that we brought with us down here. It is back at the dealership now and we are cleaning it up and taking any bad parts off to replace because it was pretty deep in the mud. Dane, the other intern, was working near where it got stuck so he got some pictures of it so I should be able to get those from him soon and put them up for everyone.



Post by Kyle

The Trucks

Here are some pictures of the trucks and the trailer we are working out of.

This is the semi parked in the dealership parking lot. The second is the inside of the trailer where we keep all the parts.




These are the two trucks that we drive around to deliver parts or work on the combines.







Post by Kyle

This is from a storm that we had today. it seemed like the rain kept on falling! but dad said we got 4.8 inches but on wednesday he dumped 5.8 so water has been dropping nonstop here! the creek by willers has risen a lot and the yard that it is behind is totally covered in water. also 40 and 70 got closed from all the water so our road has been pretty busy all day. but we havent washed away yet so that is good news!

These are pictures from the crash (which that is my new nickname). Now i just have bruising everywhere. but the bike is pretty much demolished and i will probably have to buy kaden a new bike.

First Few Days in the West

Sorry it has taken so long to get these pictures up. My first couple of nights I didn't get in until pretty late and our last night in Vernon, TX we had a bad storm that knocked out all the power to the town. We found out it was going to be a couple days until they got the power back on so we moved up to Enid, OK. So far everything has been really neat and a lot of fun too. I will try to post stuff a little quicker from now on but it all depends on how late we have to work.

These first two pictures are of my room in Vernon. It was a suite so it was really big and had everything in it.


This is a camp site where a bunch of the custom harvesters are setup. They put all of their campers there and unload all the equipment and head for the fields from there. They are starting to move out to the next stop that is why there are combines on trailers.



This is a custom harvest crew on the move down the highway. It is pretty cool how they hook everything together. The first one is a combine and a grain trailer behind one semi. Then two grain trailers on one semi and these are all full length trailers, so it is pretty long. The next two is one semi with a combine and two of the heads on a trailer behind it. The last one is just a tractor and grain cart being hauled.





These are just a view pictures of the land or the "Range" for Sterling.


Here is some corn that is looking pretty good but they want rain and the harvesters don't. It will start to shrivel up in the heat out here pretty quick.




Post by Kyle