Belle Plains, KS rest day 1

Jerry and his brother Dan and his wife Linda and their sister Gert let us check out their farm equipment. Bill is bound and determined to teach us the difference between a combine, a tractor, a sprayer and a grader. Together they farm about 4,000 acres.
This is a TRACTOR! It pushes and pulls things. It is NOT a combine!





Bob is not really looking at the tractor, he is looking at his WIFE! This is normal.





Bob should maybe buy his wife a tractor for her birthday. It would be a much better than the vaccuum cleaner he was planning on getting.





See how much women like tractors? Sara wants one, too!







Bill is actually looking at the tractor, not the women. This is normal, for Bill.



Sara is too cool.



Janelle has tired of being a nurse and has decided to pursue a CDL so she can drive one of these.



And here we see some of the people who tolerated our weird obsession with farm equipment: Dan and Linda!



We spoke to Gert at their original family home.



Here is a SPRAYER! It is NOT a combine! Very cool and a little complicated.



Everyone, except Bill, had to get a close look.




Sprayer are huge so they can straddle a row without disturbing the crop. Sunflowers get too tall to be sprayed by a sprayer; a plane must be used.







Jerry explains how the no till PLANTER works. It is NOT a combine!




The planter can fertilize, dig a groove, plant a seed, fertilize again and then cover up the seed in one shot. They don't use cultivators any more. That practice caused a lot of loss of soil.
This planter can plant 16 rows at a time. It folds up like a paper crane, then is rotated 90 degrees.



We watched a crop duster spraying a sunflower crop.



Jerry also showed us his COMBINES! But my phone's battery had died, so if you can believe it I have NO PICTURES OF COMBINES! And they were really cool.
Jerry also took us for a ride in his tractor! He thought he was just taking one woman, but then all 3 women piled in with him in his single seat cab. We told him he should get a less sexy tractor so he would attract a more manageable number of women.

Bill's family came to his house for dinner. Really nice people.

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