Farm Bulletin: The Charms of Allis Chalmers

The right piece of farm equipment can make a huge difference in the workload on a farm. Modern farm equipment is expensive to buy and operate and is often too large to nimbly negotiate the tighter confines of small farms, whereas older equipment was designed for just that sort of use. Contibutor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm brings an old but still useful piece of small farm history back to life.

Michael Abelman and his son Aaron stopped by Ayers Creek for a few days in late July 2004 as part of his Fields of Plenty project. Rereading the profile a decade later, it is striking how much things have changed, though fundamentally we are the same farm. The profile celebrated the summer here, but we already had one winter market season under our belt. That spring we learned that the combination of spring break, Easter and Passover can kill a market. Lowest gross we have ever had; when vendors leave their cash box unattended there is not much to say for the day. Also learned that we should grow horseradish. Somehow, black radish does not have the same allure as a bitter herb for the seder, much as we tried to laud its many virtues. Our first planting of Roy's Calais flint corn was in the ground, and we were planning our orchard and vineyard.

Combining chickpeas.

After leaving Gaston, Michael visited Jennifer Greene's Windborne Farm in Scott Valley. There he fell in love with her old Allis Chalmers All Crop. It is a small combine pulled by a farm tractor. A combine gets its name because it combines the formerly separate tasks of cutting, threshing and winnowing seed crops, including legumes and grains.

Closeup harvesting chickpeas.

A couple months later he located a pair for sale in Canby, one apparently almost running and a decrepit example for parts. We went to see them with him, and it was clear the rose's bloom was withering as he paced around the two dusty, rusty hunks of machinery with their frayed belts, broken reel bats and rotting tires. We shared his reservations, even as he clung to the memory of Jennifer's machine and all it could do. The challenge of transporting the machines to Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island and repairing them dislodged the yearning.

The straw rack.

Apparently, the pathos of the bedraggled machines and their potential gnawed at us. Not sure what exactly happened to dislodge us from our rational frame of mind, but we purchased them. The machine is boxy with most of its drives on the outside. Like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, it is meant to be repaired on the fly with materials at hand. Not sleek or elegant, just enough of it to carry out the task well. Perhaps the idea opening up the list of crops we grow had some influence.

Corroded cleaning shoe.

Other farmers with big machines speak admiringly of the All Crop, with its mixture of flexibility, simplicity and economy. Encouraging the endeavor, not emulating it, mind you. They take their old combines to the Banks demolition derby, not the shop. They are quite comfortable in their modern air-conditioned cabs with stereo and computer controls. In less than an hour, they can harvest more grain than the All Crop can in a day. However, their machines take a full day to clean between crops, and the All Crop is clean and greased in less than an hour.

Bullet holes a point of pride.

Drawn to the machine, we forgot the first rule of purchasing equipment: turn over the engine to make sure it is operable. Apparently, someone tried to start the engine by using a lot of starter fluid (ether) which cleaned all the oil off the cylinder walls and the engine corroded solid. Neither Marvel Mystery Oil nor grease pumped into the cylinder would dislodge the corroded pistons. Perhaps we would have purchased it anyway, but it threw a disappointing money wrench into the works. The All Crop took a backseat to other projects until our daughter married Jonathan Hunt. In March 2008, he visited and helped strip down the machine. Later he found us an old driveshaft to replace the engine.* Relentlessly, he peeled away the excuses for delaying and pushed us to get it running.

Newly balanced cylinder.

Restoring farm equipment as a show piece is very different from a functional restoration. We want the machine to operate for thousands of more hours reliably, so pulleys, shafts and bearings need cleaning and, if necessary, replacing. Rubber and wood parts likewise. Tom Yasnowski specializes in locating or replicating obsolete Allis Chalmers parts, supplying us with the belts and rubber parts that had disintegrated over the decades. The cylinder and concave chamber where the threshing of the seeds takes place needed a complete overhaul. Yasnowski supplied replacement rubber-faced bars for the cylinder and Dave Naumann at Ernst Irrigation in St. Paul helped us locate a shop where the cylinder was balanced. It spins at high speed and, balanced with modern equipment, it runs as smooth as silk. Being an old piece of machinery, we deemed it acceptable to keep the bullet holes that appear when machines are unattended for awhile in rural America.

Bagger's platform.

We replaced upwards of 100 corroded bolts holding together the 10-foot-long straw rack, and saturated the dry wood with linseed oil. The adjustable cleaning shoe is where the seed is separated from the chaff, the winnowing task. It had corroded in place making adjustments impossible, requiring several days of careful cleaning and lubrication, and a layer of linseed oil on the wooden parts.

Jon Hunt at work.

A couple of weeks ago, Jon took his place on the bagger's platform where the seeds drop into sacks. We put in a couple of hours figuring out the fine points of combining chickpeas. As we tried to communicate over the roar of the tractor, the rattling of grain conveying chains and the thrashing cylinder, I might have well have been communicating with a wookiee. It was great to see the patina of a working machine return, that fragrant, short-lived gloss from the resins of the plants. Some of you may have picked up on the fragrance in the barley, and it will be present in the chickpeas as well. There was Queen Ann's Lace growing in the field, giving the grain a hint of wild carrot aroma. Thanks, Jon.

* Anthony clarifies that "the machine was equipped with the optional engine or motor. Motor was seized so we replaced it with a drive shaft or PTO (power take off) shaft to run the machine off of the tractor's engine."

All photos by Anthony Boutard with the exception of the portrait at top.

Farm Bulletin: A Mechanical Meltdown

Farming, as contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm, reminds us, is not all the gentle art of sowing seeds and waiting for them to break forth from the soil. Sometimes the whole harvest can come to a screeching halt when a mechanical part decides to have a meltdown.

High summer is the season of dust—the wind, the combines, the plows and traffic all keep the air well endowed. Even walking across the field sends up clouds. It penetrates the clothing and clogs the nasal passages. Every year, as the main berry season approaches, we order in three or four truckloads of crushed rock to dress the road from the field to the farm buildings. This fresh band of rock helps reduce the dust when we bring the berries to the packing room.

The new pump installed…Anthony would have preferred claret or lime, but gray is all they had.

Thursday we set up the 50 horsepower pump (top photo) in case we need to increase the humidity the field so as to prevent damage by ultra-violet radiation when the field temperature passes 90°F (32°C). It ran for a few minutes and then we got the dreaded ALARM 14 EARTH FAULT on the variable frequency drive, the pump's brain. The drives were programmed in Denmark so they use the British term for the ground. We battled this problem last year, but it was erratic and the resetting the computer worked. This time the gremlin settled in and resetting did not work.

We spent a couple of hours troubleshooting the problem with the electrician on the phone, connecting and disconnecting leads on the 430 volt system. It was not a temperamental drive or a bad cord, the motor was simply toast. Once again, Ernst Irrigation pulled through and we have new motor on the pump in less than 24 hours after diagnosing the problem. Credit also to our staff who know how to scramble when we need their help, making it easier for the technicians to carry out the swap.

Farm Bulletin: It Takes A Village to Harvest a Berry

A popular saying has it that it takes a village to raise a child. Contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm tells us that, in many ways, it works much the same way for a farmer.

We are suffering the usual grunts and groans as we get ready for the Chesters.

A couple of weeks ago, a young heron shorted out the power line to the pumps, frying the controller on our smaller pump. Ernst Irrigation had a used one that worked, and Gerry had it installed quickly. Heron survived, just some singed primaries.

One of the indispensable Gators.

Then, ten days ago, one of the utility vehicles lost compression, a bad symptom, but we were spared the worst. On the Gator, older models used a plastic camshaft gear. Doug down at Ernst installed a new steel gear and it is running nicely.

Early this week, an "alarm 14" on the controller for our big pump used to cool the blackberry field indicated a short in the motor windings, so we had to pull the 600 beast and bring it down to McMinnville. Picked it up this morning. Craig from Ernst got it up and running just in time for the upcoming heat ripple. Funny how mellifluous a 50 HP pump coming up to pressure sounds on a hot afternoon.

Despite this tale of woe, we have not retreated from our solemn commitment to bring Chesters and other good food to the Hillsdale Farmers' Market with a cheerful smile. Credit all the good staff at Ernst Irrigation in St. Paul for easing us out of tight spots over the last couple of weeks.

The banal bumper sticker reads "No Farms, No Food" which has some measure of truth, but the last couple of weeks drove home the fact that there are plenty of other businesses that are essential for us to bring you food. Any successful business is part of a community and we don't do this alone, despite some of the cramped rhetoric bandied about lately.

Farm Bulletin: Public Works Projects

When we city folk go to the farmers' markets, we see the end result of much work and planning, some of it happening months, if not years, beforehand. Farming takes hard, physical labor, and it's important to look deeper, to notice the berry-stained hands, the stiff backs, the cuts and bruises. I'm grateful to be able to post contributor Anthony Boutard's missives as a reminder of what it takes to grow the food that we put on our tables.

Farming is more than a pastoral activity: it also requires careful planning. As with any town or city, we rely on infrastructure such as water delivery, drainage, housing and transportation. Among our annual activities are what we call public works projects. Over the last three years, we have been working on renewing two blocks that were planted to blackberries. One is going into vegetable production and the other may be planted to raspberries. Berries are very expensive and risky to plant, and sane farmers shy away from the crop.

The change is equivalent to urban renewal. The trellises and irrigation pipes are removed, old canes are mown and turned under and restorative cover crops such as chicories, clovers and mustards are planted. We needed to improve the drainage in the field and change the irrigation. The plums needed better drainage. We have lost some trees where the soil was water-logged. The orchard has an odd mosaic of drainage patterns.

We drove our Volvo down to Needy Tile and loaded up 6,000 feet of drainage tile. It is not your mum's old 240. Our Volvo has a 26-foot flat bed, a 310 HP Cummins engine, two 100-gallon fuel tanks and a Hendrickson tandem rear end. (It took a while to get used to people complimenting our rear-end.) The Volvo is registered at 38,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (GVW), and is a beast to drive. The definition of embarrassment is failing to shift to lower range at a traffic light; the truck stalls. The tile is not that heavy, but it is bulky and fills the bed.

Needy Tile is located in the Clackamas County settlement of Needy. The Needy post office opened in February 1855. Drain tiles were originally two-foot long pieces of terra-cotta pipe. They were placed in a deep ditch down end-to-end, then covered with soil. The water seeps between the seams and flows down to an open ditch or pond. Tile manufacturers were located in the bottom land near clay deposits and the river bottom hardwoods needed for firing the kilns. Some beautiful old kilns still stand near the Groner School in Scholls.

Today, drain tile is a long plastic tube with slits along its length. Water trickles through the slits and down the tube to its outlet. The location of the factory on a narrow road next to a river reflects the history tile-making, not good industrial planning. The immaculate factory with its hissing and clunking machinery, and the serpentine tile hoses moving along the floor, is straight of Tati's "Mon Oncle." The only thing missing is Alain Romans' music—the truck lacks a CD player. It took us three days to lay the tile pipe.

Next, we loaded the Volvo with about 600 feet of water pipe. While we had the trencher on site, we dug out the ditches to bury the pipe. We buy our irrigation supplies from Ernst Irrigation in St. Paul. The area around St. Paul is called French Prairie. Once it was covered with Blue Lake pole beans, and the Marion County Soil Survey published in 1972 still evaluated soils for pole bean production. Today, it is all bush beans picked by Pixall Super Jacks. They also grow a lot seed garlic and hops on the prairie.

All of our irrigation supplies are purchased from Ernst. Until a decade ago, it was part of an independent John Deere dealership and irrigation supplier. The Fisher Group acquired Ernst in 1999. In 2009, Fisher decided to combine stores and relocate in nearby Donald. The families that founded Ernst got together and repurchased the irrigation company from Fisher. Ernst is an important employer for St. Paul and it was a community effort to save the business. Patrick, Jill and Mike, the children of Bill Dolan, one of the founders, are responsible for day-to-day operation of the store. It is a friendly, small-town business. Matt Corcoran is their micro-irrigation specialist.  He designed and redesigned our system at various times over the last 12 years. We are a tiny customer relative to other farm operations, but the staff are always attentive.

Now our pubic works projects are done for the season, and we are back attending to plants and harvesting crops.