Farming with the oldies, 1950 to 2006 in one field. 2026 and the same tractor

I freely admit to being a bottom feeder. But, I am also prone to great leaps in farming technology. 

In 2006 I bought a Great Plains 1500 no-till drill and started no-tilling for other farmers and a bit for myself. 

There was a government program that gave money for cover crops and for no-till planting. The cover crop program was great for me, (until farmers figured out you could just spin on oats with fertilizer spreader and still get paid.) 

I think the first couple years I planted like 500 acres in the spring and 500 in the fall. Kept me pretty busy. Of course farming was different then. 

Twenty years ago the Willamette Valley was wall to wall Tall Fescue and Prennial Ryegrass.  Most people did not have tractors over 150 horsepower. There were a lot of 200-800 acre farms. There were very few disk rippers. People still plowed. Wheat prices were not terrible.

The idea was to kill the grass sod and then no-till wheat or oats. You got good weed control and all that grass sod had a season to break down and it was easy to disk or plow under.

Hiring me to no-till wheat in the fall also allowed the farmer to take off and go hunting or plant into wet ground after the fall rains. Farmers would show me a couple fields, get fertilizer and seed, and then leave and I would plant.

Things have changed a lot in the last ten years. Most of my early customers have passed away or retired. Farms have tripled in size, tractors have doubled in size. I still get calls to plant wet hillsides or do the odd 40 acres but it is a different world. 

My backup plan after escaping the University was to upgrade my drill and tractor, maybe a 185 or 195 Workhorse, and dive back in. I misjudged the market.

A comparison in size. We went from a ten foot drill to a 15 foot drill. While we didn't use the Z to plant, mostly used a Moline M670, the jump from 1950 to 2006 was pretty amazing.

 

This was the first Great Plains 1500 no-till drill and I had just purchased this White 2-155. I think the White was $17,000 and the drill was $28,000

 

This was taken yesterday. Not in the same field, the previous field was swallowed up by a hungry neighbor. This field is one of the few custom jobs that I still have. I think I have been no-tilling it every couple years since 2008.