Russ' Vintage Iron

New Vintage Iron Letter!

Russ Quinn
By  Russ Quinn , DTN Staff Reporter
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I received a letter in the mail the other day. I use to get many stories and photos sent to me but in recent years of writing this column I haven't gotten too many memos.

This letter was from Myron Stammen. Myron is from New Weston, Ohio, and farms and milks cows near this west-central Ohio community. His home is also just 8 miles from the plant were J&M Wagons are manufactured.

Myron wrote:

"I believe you would enjoy the contest flyer enclosed less than 3 hours from you. It takes great skill and patience. I plowed (in) years past. I would like to attend if I can make things work out."

Myron Stammen

New Weston, Ohio

He enclosed a flyer for the U.S.A. Ploughing Organization. The group is set to have its 2014 National Plowing matches Aug. 15-17 held in Beresford, S.D.

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For those of you not familiar with South Dakota geography, Beresford is located in the southeastern part of the state. The town is also located right along Interstate 29, I have driven past it many times on my various reporting trips to the Northern Plains region.

The organization does have a website and it is http://usapo.org/….

From the newsletter that Myron enclosed in his letter to me, it looks like these plowing matches are a big deal. There are different classes - antique class, small plow and reversible class, open classes and even a garden tractor division.

So if you are near Beresford in mid-Aug., you might want to check out the U.S.A Ploughing Organization's national plowing matches.

I will be perfectly honest here - I don't really know much about plowing even though I have plowed several times before.

When I was a kid I would help my dad plow up old alfalfa stands once in a while. He would plow with the one old John Deere plow and I would get the other JD plow. I couldn't even tell what models the plows were and the only thing Dad told me to do is follow him across the field, raise up the plow at the other end of the field and come back.

That was about the only time I can remember he would use the plows. The tillage I was more familiar with was disking. He and my uncle would disk the soil once before they planted beans and usually twice before they planted corn during my childhood but I don't remember them plowing anything else other than to get rid of alfalfa.

This compares to their childhood when my grandpa would plow every acre and then usually came back and disked a couple of times before the crop was planted, according to my dad. It was good my grandparents had seven children with three boys -- there was a lot of tractor work which had to be done on their dairy farm.

In recent years we have continued this trend of less tillage operations. We will still disk up some corn stalks ahead of the soybean planter. We also will no-till right into the stalks.

About the only plowing on our farm involves taking one of the old plows and plowing up a few terraces or maybe around the edges of the field once in a while to keep the grass from creeping into the field. And this only happens every few years anymore it seems.

This past spring we had to plow up an older stand of alfalfa within an acreage-type of housing development on the edge of Omaha. Normally we would spray the alfalfa to kill it but since there are some trees and a yard nearby, we decided it was probably better to plow up the alfalfa.

It was a good thing Dad was doing most of the fieldwork because I don't know if I would have known how to plow up these two, oblong shaped fields. I stood and watched him for a while and like Myron said, there is certainly a skill you need to employ when you plow, you don't just wing it.

I have a number of skills that come in handy on the farm, but plowing a whole field of alfalfa is obviously not one I possess.

Thanks to Myron for the letter!

(AG/BAS)

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