Hooliganry at the National Farm Machinery Show

[@farmerpete]

I used to go to the farm shows to see the equipment I’d be buying in 20 years. I’ve reached the age where that’s now moot. 🙂

[@Military-Museum-LP]

Thanks for taking us Jacob.

[@jamesmorrison1884]

That would be the best. Working in the hot sun in a black machine so intelligent

[@lukestrawwalker]

When you have engineers designing stuff who've never spent a day on the farm...

[@curtisowens4588]

Omg Jacob you’re going to laugh at me I thought that step for working on the Gleener was a seat. That was bling moment. Lol

[@Hinesfarm-Indiana]

Nice gleaner, that’s what we run. 1998 is when they started painting them, our 2002 R72 is painted galvanized.

[@andyg3240]

My next cutter will be a krone. John Deere still tops as far as balers go.

[@lukestrawwalker]

Last time I went to the NFMS we got there early and I managed to see all the floor exhibits in the different buildings, BUT you can't spend more than about a few minutes in each brand... maybe a couple more if there's things you skip. I usually just browse brochures and look at the stuff that's really interesting to me that I might actually someday want or need... course I end up with two 50 lb bags of brochures at the end of the day-- stuff to look at during the winter/rainy season... got a collection of farm brochures going actually, got it all sorted in crates. I miss the Farm Progress satellite show that they had in Lubbock, TX on permanent grounds just east of town... it was a VERY nice venue. They used to have about 60 acres of display grounds, divided up into six E-W streets with three N-S avenues connecting them all-- one on each end and one down the middle. Ran seed tour trams out to the surrounding several thousand acres of farmland around the show site planted in various crops, from cotton, sorghum, corn, and wheat, to alfalfa and hay crops... all kinds of demonstrations going on out there including tillage, harvesting, cutting, raking, baling, chopping silage, wrapping bales, picking and stripping cotton, combining corn, sorghum, soybeans, and wheat, etc... irrigation, you name it. Nice show. Used to go to it all the time when my sister was in college at Texas Tech there in town back in the mid-late 90's... then we didn't get to go for a couple years or so after she graduated and I got married... when my wife and I went back, the show was a shadow of itself-- half the brands weren't even represented, all the machinery you could sit in was locked up tight, most was roped off where you couldn't get within arms reach of it... salesmen that had been wandering around chatting now looked like prison guards roaming around looking for people ducking under ropes to get closer look, and the brochures which had been freely available at the courtesy tents were now under lock and key and only handed out grudgingly... the last two streets at the back of the show were deserted. The trams still came and went from the field demos but they too were cut back from the old days. I was rather shocked by how quickly it'd faded down to nothing in only 3-4 years... I got to talking to a salesman and he explained why... he was a CaseIH salesman and he said that their dealer chain stores put in a HUGE effort to represent the company at the show... they worked for WEEKS readying equipment and hauling it down on semis, setting up the display areas, contracting the big circus "courtesy tents" getting set up, and then having people sign up to work the show. The had to "safe" certain things like blades on disks and sickles and stuff like that to prevent people from getting cut or sliced or losing parts... all that takes time and costs money. Corporate (CaseIH Corp.) USED to pay the dealer a pretty good sum of money to cover expenses like all this prep work and trucking down equipment, since they were representing the entire company, but then they 'cheaped out" and simply told the dealers in the area that they were "expected" to represent the company at their own expense, and quit paying for anything. Just the large display areas needed for combines, balers, tillage tools, planters, and various other equipment could amount to $50,000 dollars, before setup. SO basically the local dealers just sent *A* tractor or *A* baler or whatever and that was it... so where before you might have the "entire" lineup, now you had a few piecemeal machines here and there... More to come...

[@lukestrawwalker]

Continued... The company used to send them cases of brochures and "freebies" to hand out during the show, like hats, pens, notepads, koozies, etc... but then the company cheaped out and expected the dealers to order crates of the stuff themselves at full cost... so most bought a case or two of the essentials and that was that. They'd run out the first day and, oh well. Then to top it off, the local schools started bringing out the school kids and turning them loose for the day to "learn about farming", IOW a free field trip. The show organizers/grounds owners loved it, because it was a big tax break for them plus generated "local goodwill" by "educating school kids about farming". Course what happened was, the kids mobbed the show grounds... they were into everything, would make long lines to get into tractors and machinery and wouldn't come out, blocking things up, and the regular farmers traveling from all over the US and even abroad from Asia or Europe or Africa or elsewhere wouldn't get to see what they came to see, and didn't appreciate having to wade through all those kids... the kids would steal knobs and stuff out of the machines, or sabotage stuff by stuffing garbage or other items into plugs or anything else they could get to, even the engines and inner workings of the machines, so basically they were having to have the mechanics go over every machine that went to the show with a fine tooth comb and replacing or fixing everything that got broken, sabotaged, or stolen. The kids would mob the courtesy tents and make off with all the brochures and "freebies" handed out to farmers, and they'd run out of brochures the first day, and have none left for the remaining 2 days of the show. It was just a costly nightmare for the dealers, so a bunch of them got together and told CaseIH that if they weren't going to pay anything to help with costs, they weren't going at all. SO that was that. Their local chain dealer with a number of stores sent a modest display, all locked up to prevent kids stealing or sabotaging stuff, and handed out freebies and brochures to farmers only, but it was tiny compared to the display area they had when all the regional dealerships teamed up to do the show. Some brands quit coming entirely. With so many kids swamping the grounds, this turned off a lot of the target audience-- farmers who would come in, some from great distances or even foreign countries, to see the machinery up close and in action and talk to company reps... they started staying away, and attendance suffered. The lack of salesmen not guarding equipment and having to ask (and look justified in asking) for a brochure or get offered a freebie by the counter girls in the courtesy tents just made it that much less appealing. Vendors that supplied food and other things started not coming as prices rose and attendance dropped off... I noticed maybe HALF the attendees of previous shows, that was for sure. Made it hard to justify planting dozens of acres of different crops from sunflowers to soybeans not normally grown in the area, at odd times when they wouldn't mature properly, just for the field demonstrations to be ready for the show, when attendance was lagging and less potential paying customers to actually see it. Basically turning it into a dumping grounds for the schools to turn kids loose all day killed the show. I think that was either the last year or next to last year they had it, which would have been around 2002 or 3 IIRC, a year or two after I got married when my new bride and I attended. Shame. They SHOULD have done like the Texas Renaissance Festival did... they have a huge festival every weekend for like 2.5 months from late September to the end of November or thereabouts... they've even added themed weekends and themed areas in the festival, with all the different foods and rides and games and vendors selling stuff, shows, lots of fun. They also added "kids days" on Wednesdays or Thursdays when the schools can arrange to come out and have "kid friendly" field trips to the Ren Fest... of course the alcohol vendors are all closed and the swordsmiths and knife maker vendors and stuff are all closed, but the vendors selling food and trinkets are open and do a booming business I'm sure... others can open or close as they choose I suppose-- not much chance of selling fancy windchimes for a couple hundred bucks or fancy handcrafted furniture to school kids, so I bet they don't bother opening. The kids can roam around and eat and ride the rides and see the joust and whatever, the Guttenberg printing press, the water wheel flour mill and coin stamping rig, the glass blower and blacksmithing demonstrations... weaving and spinning and all that making cloth and textiles... the Tex Ren Fest gets a HUGE tax break and "brownie points" for hosting the school field trip days at reduced prices, and the vendors don't have to worry so much about being overrun with kids turned loose by the hundreds on a regular sales weekend... plus no kids getting into trouble by sneaking booze or seeing wenches with their goodies hanging out, or the tons of drunk college girls in their bikinis and chain mail outfits with their raccoon tails hanging down over their thongs... stuff like that. Win/Win for the company and the kids... More to come...

[@lukestrawwalker]

Continued... They SHOULD have done something like that for the farm show... had a "field trip day" for the schools to come out BEFORE the show started, say on Wednesday or Thursday when the show went Friday, Saturday, and Sunday... or else scheduled it for Monday after the show was over... ask the vendors to wait to haul stuff out and break down the show until Monday evening, so the kids could see stuff... they could lock up the cabs and rope off the machines and after the show they'd be out of brochures and freebies for the kids to make off with, or they could allow them to have whatever was left to avoid having to box it up and carry it back to the dealership to store it... if before the sho opened, they could ask to set up a day early and not put out the brochures and freebies until Thursday evening before the public opening on Friday morning, so the kids couldn't make off with stuff... leave the cabs locked and the doors down on the machines and let the kids roam around without getting into too much trouble, nor underfoot of the regular attendees coming to see everything. Win/Win. Yeah an extra day of piddling about for the dealers, set up a day early or tear down a day late, but so what?? You could basically just have a few guys roaming around keeping an eye on things and answering a few basic school kid questions, not "full staff" for the show answering farmer questions potential customers ask... Really a shame that they let it come to that... would have been a win/win to have a "school day' before or after the show. Always irked me anyway when all the vendors started packing up at lunchtime on Sunday because the show closed at 5-6 pm... I'm like "at least leave stuff til closing time!" they'd screw off half the last day for pity's sake, so if you didn't go Friday or Saturday, you were basically screwed. The show was large enough that it took two days to see it all anyway-- one day to systematically roam up and down every one of the six streets, looking at all the displays on both sides of each street and lining each Avenue at each end and in the middle... the "varied industry tent" and vendor tents would take and hour or so each, so you could just see it all if you spent maybe five minutes at each booth, display area, or brand... and go home with your 50 pound bag of brochures of interest, maybe some freebies, and a purchase or two of tools or whatever... What was really nice was, the Farmhouse fraternity set up cattle mineral feeders at the corners of the streets and avenues and kept them supplied with plenty of roasted salted in-shell peanuts out of 50 lb bags, free for the taking-- grab a handful and fill a pocket or paper bag and munch as you went. Out at the field demos, they ran a tiny soda trailer with a soda fountain, handing out free cups of sprite or other sodas or pop... they usually had a little Ford tractor pulling the trailer around from one demo to the next... The second day of the show you'd get there when the opened at 8, grab some breakfast (if you didn't already) and then hop on a tram out to the field demos that started at 9. Then you had a choice-- a tram ran from each demo to the central avenue drop off/pickup point after each demo and hauled people out to the next demo, or another tram would take you from one demo directly to the next one... 9,10,11, 12, then they took everybody back to the central avenue drop off for lunch in the show grounds, and then back out to the next demo at 1, 2, 3, and 4pm which was the final demo for the day, and then both trams back to the central avenue. You'd have from 4-5 pm to goof off in the show area and see whatever you wanted to see that you didn't get a good enough look at the day before, or get a brochure they might have been out of the previous day, stuff like that... then at 5, the show closed, trams out to the parking areas or the ride-n-drive if you missed it earlier (as long as you were in line by 5 usually) and that was across from the parking area... really, really nice.... Such a shame it all went away... Even "THE" Farm Progress Show isn't as good as it used to be... I went when it was still rotating from year to year between Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, but then after a couple years they just locked it all into the Iowa Colonies show grounds and that was that... and I've heard it's nowhere as near as good as it was in the old days. I still want to go to the Husker Harvest Days in Nebraska and the Georgia Farm Show, if I ever get the chance... Later! OL J R : )

[@JMo268]

I had a Kubota which was nice until it needed an injector and the part alone was $900 because they put a circuit in them or something. My Ford injectors are $25. Also my 40HP Ford and my 70HP Ford share so many parts I really like that too. I do wish my haybine would tow inline like the newer implements.

[@dehavenfamilyfarm]

I've thought about going to the show one year, but there are so many great videos out about it I don't need too 😃

[@lukestrawwalker]

Are you kidding?? The show is SO big that the videos only cover about a thousandth of what's there... even if you had an hour long video it wouldn't cover 1/100th of it. When I went I like to see everything. Might not stop to really look and inspect everything or chat with dealers/salesmen, but a little bit and at least look. Don't worry too much about sitting in everything, one or two here and there, but just to see everything and learn what I can. I grab a brochure or two on things that interest me or I want to learn more about, and still end up with a 50 lb bag by the end of the day. Usually some freebies and stuff handed out... koozies, pens and pencils, notebooks or notepads, etc... even had a little decorative cotton bale given to me at one show at the end, and a little cotton bale the size of a footstool, given to me at the end of a show because they didn't want to haul it home... LOL:) I found that at the Louisville Show, that basically I had to do it systematically, up and down each aisle, spending a couple minutes at each vendor or brand, maybe a minute or less looking at each machine, maybe skipping a few or spending only less than a minute looking at some things, and then I could spend a few more minutes looking at something I was really interested in... Even then, doing it systematically, I could BARELY see everything in the show in one day... Its about like going to the Air Force museum in Dayton... you have to have a system if you want to see it all in one day. Get there early and get a spot on the bus to the big hangar inside the base with the experimental planes and stuff... (they were building a new hangar to move all that stuff to the main museum and off the protected area of the base to minimize security issues, dunno if that's finished or not yet). Then start at the "early days" displays and work your way around through the WWI, interwar years, WW2, and back through the Cold War to the missile/nuclear stuff at the very back... if you don't spend over about 30 seconds to a minute at each display, certainly not enough time to read all the display boards, but take a picture of them for later, you can JUST get it all in before closing time, and still have time to go outside and see the stuff that is displayed outside like the Minuteman missile railroad car, the few outdoor plane displays, and the road-mobile prototype missile truck display.... BUT you gotta keep moving to see it all... same as the farm show!

[@chargermopar]

I wonder if any of that equipment will still be functional in 30 years.

[@lukestrawwalker]

Not the way they build stuff today... so complex with all those electronics, most of that stuff will be unavailable and will force it all to the scrap yard long before then. Stuff isn't built to last anymore, it's built to sell and to service for a few years and to get thrown away and scrapped. The old machines were designed to be fixed, to last, simple so they just did the job and would hold up... new stuff isn't built like that-- it's built to be cheap to manufacture and to last long enough to be out of warranty without too many expensive problems for the company, and then to sell plenty parts while they're still available... then to be shot and ready for the scrap yard so they can sell you another new one... I read where some guys were testing the new Deere rotary combines when they came out... the company sent them new ones to custom harvesters to run because they put more wear in a year on machines than most farmers do in ten years... they were ticked because halfway through the season they were having all sorts of problems-- one machine clogged up and refused to move the grain out of the cleaning shoe to the elevator-- when they opened it up they found that the auger flighting had worn down thin as a razor blade and then simply folded over flat against the auger tube, so it was just tumbling the grain. Half of the metal in the machine was worn razor thin in a lot of place... building them too light and too cheap... they had to beef them up and go back and reengineer some stuff before they started producing them and selling them for general sales... Yet us small guys are running stuff built 50, 60, 70 years ago in some cases, so long as we can get parts, and it just keeps running... steel and materials were for the most part much better back then... new stuff is made from Chinesium...

[@chargermopar]

@@lukestrawwalker Yes! You can still see vintage equipment chugging along getting work done!

[@Budd56]

I'm not surprised you went, but I am surprised you took video 😁😁😁. Thanks for sharing 👍👍✌️

[@boehmfarm4276]

I thought about not, hard environment with all the people.

[@lukestrawwalker]

@@boehmfarm4276 No video with the "How Farms Work" guys?? You know, the KZbin stars?? LOL:) Later! OL J R :)

[@bobearthquakepumpkinfarm7455]

Marketers always enjoy re-inventing the wheel. Technology is great, but not always necessarily needed. I have, however, changed my ideas on mowing hay. I would like to get a pull-behind disc mower. I only have a few legumes in my dry hay, and wrap the legumes for haylage. So, I don't really need to crimp hay, a tedder will dry it just fine.

[@stevenwright6869]

We had pottinger am Malone at home they have been amazing both if them we trad them in every few years just who is offering us the best deal at the time. Both built like tanks welds are right. Highly recommended both

[@jasonw2893]

Wish I could’ve went this year but things get busy and plans change

[@walterlaubscherjr2011]

Great video

[@Farmerupyonder]

Nice video. Way too much electrical stuff anymore. Glad to see a plug for Gleaner haha. NH makes nice stuff.

[@Hinesfarm-Indiana]

Yep we run gleaners, work great for us.

[@diamondacres5455]

I sat in one 😁 "we will disown you" 😦

[@craigadair128]

I dont even pay attention to the new equipment anymore. It is so far beyond my reach in regard to price and technology.

[@lukestrawwalker]

yeah I used to look for new ideas I could incorporate into my older equipment... sometimes you can upgrade stuff or make changes that really help. But nowadays over the last 20 years or so, everything is mainly just the "gee whiz" factor, tons of electronics and garbage that just breaks down or lasts a few years and goes wonky or quits working entirely.... don't have any need for that. I had the chance to upgrade by 7100 Deere planter to vac meters... dealer had a pallet box with a fan, hoses, manifold, four meters, vac gauge, everything you'd need... I don't know where he got it, if it was ordered by a customer to upgrade an older planter or add on more rows to an existing planter, maybe narrow it up and add row units, or what... I could have made it work, BUT he wanted about a grand for the pallet box of parts... in the end I got some Kinze brush meters online from a guy selling his used ones for like $25 each, and later got some corn finger meters for the corn and the Kinze brush meters plant everything else... picked up some brushless hoppers and drive disconnects for a 7000 from a used parts place for about $300 bucks, and retrofitted the entire planter from the old style bottom plates to plateless drives and meters for about $400 bucks... and the brush meters plant just as accurately as a vacuum meter with NO adjustments, NO popped off air hoses or bad seals/gaskets, NO scalding hot oil and screaming orbit motor fan pulling a vacuum on the meters, etc.... No worries about hydraulic flow dropping and vacuum dropping all the seeds off the disks, and then it planting 20-30 feet before it starts dropping seed again cuz the plates have to make a full revolution to start planting again. The brush meters and finger meters, if you get rained out and park the planter for a week, when you go back to the field it starts dropping seed again as soon as the disks start turning. I've seen the vac planters first hand on the BIL's place-- he bought a 15/30 inch Deere 1780 vac planter for planting soybeans, and it's ALWAYS something or other-- dirt wearing out seals, disks, popped hoses, or hoses popping off, mouse nests blocking airflow in the manifolds, or the fan inlet screens, etc... constantly tweaking when the monitor tattletales on it... I've seen the population on a row drop by 30,000 seeds/acre because of a worn door seal started leaking... A lot of these new "features" are really just 'bugs in waiting"... like Grandpa used to say, "A $50 solution to a $5 problem..."

[@train1962]

Nice Tour.

[@hoosierfarmkid]

Was great talking to you at the Krone booth. I have some more disc mower and baler on CUT shenanigans than I showed you on my channel if you’re interested. When you were at the Deutz booth you should’ve checked out the “small” loader tractor that was there, I think you’d have liked it. Highly mechanical, small, short platform and cab height like most Euro utilities seem to be. The Kioti RX7320 was similar, just a lot taller. Tom Pemberton has one of those Marlone mowers (3pt straight cutter bar) and seems to like it. I definitely think once you’ve ran a disc mower you’ll be sold, they just work so much better at cutting through whatever than sickle based machines, and think you’d like the 3pt for the odd ball stuff you do.

[@lukestrawwalker]

Yep I run a 1988 PZ Zweegers drum mower we bought new back then... it's only a 7 foot 2 inch cut, but I run it on a Ford 5610S tractor at six MPH all day long, in waist to chest high hay so thick you can't hardly walk through it... it just cuts it like butter! It'll go straight through clay soil anthills and zip them off without a problem, roots and all... sickles clog up with a mud ball between the guards, and you have to get off and dig it out with a screwdriver... PITA... Plus you can cut TWICE as fast as a sickle machine... and it'll zip off down or tangled hay that would choke up and clog a sickle machine...

[@jankotze1959]

Very nice video and equipment

[@gregrhodes8451]

Enjoyed your video Jacob

[@thepubliceye]

It looks like most USA farmers are very well fed.

[@boehmfarm4276]

Lol. Too much sitting on tractors, not enough gardening coupled with terrible rural food supply.

[@lukestrawwalker]

@@boehmfarm4276 Too much junk food... eating McDonalds in the combine or auger cart or grain truck til all hours...

[@marks.c4753]

Next time Jacob can you show more of the leader of the pack. You know the green stuff.

[@boehmfarm4276]

Lol, no copycats here.

[@joshk.6246]

Mark S.C, The Duetz stuff? 😄😆😀

[@larrybg9293]

Good stuff

[@waynejones5239]

Nice video Merry

[@frankscruggs4749]

Good video.

[@MrJohndeere3720]

i'll take that blue LS tractor :)

[@CrestviewStudios]

I didn't realize I was that fat, jeez🤦🏻‍♀️

[@boehmfarm4276]

Fish eye lens on the camera adds ten pounds lol

[@RYAN-nd8bv]

Does Krone even offer a 3pt disc mower with conditioner in the U.S.A.? There is a lot of 3pt disc mowers in my area and I have never seen one. Everyone tedders their hay right behind the mower they say that conditions it enough and then again before raking to turn it and dry the bottom. We don't own a tedder so we don't tedder our hay. I do know this once you switch to a 3pt disc mower you will never use your sickle mower again. And will change the way you mow your fields. The weight is the only downfall. Disc mowers and tedders are fast time is money and hay is a time and fuel consuming job so speed saves time and money. We have a Krone am242 8ft 3pt disc mower a 990 David Brown fit it pretty good We did run it with our 3610 Ford once that was a hand full lower 3pt arms are to light and they bent we now run it on a 7710 Ford it doesn't even know it's back there.

[@rogercarrico4975]

I have a Krone am 242 also. Pull it with a JD 5300 , 50 pto hp. Works fine. I wouldn't want to put it on anything smaller however

[@lukestrawwalker]

Yeah I've run a Kuhn 8 foot disk mower on a Ford 5610S for a guy who's wife I used to drive school buses with, when he needed a hand now and then and would pay me day wages for working for him... the 5610 could pull that thing at 6 mph all day long in anything you wanted to cut. It was a little heavy but not as heavy as my PZ Zweegers 7 foot 2 inch cut drum mower we bought new in '88... that thing folds STRAIGHT BACK and basically she's real light on the front end, maybe a few hundred pounds of front end weight, the rest is on the rear wheels. Once it's in working position folded out to the side, it's fine. Those are 72 horse (engine) tractors and they'll handle the 8-9 foot mowers no problem, wouldn't want to go smaller, though. If you add a conditioner, you add a few hundred pounds (for rollers, maybe a couple hundred for tine conditioner) and I'd fully expect to drop a gear, 5 mph versus 6 mph on a Ford... at least, depending how heavy the hay is...

[@jimjoe9945]

2+2 could pull it.

[@joshk.6246]

Its not so much the wires as it is the boards, chips, and buttons/switches that will wear. Thin metal components (traces) + hot & cold cycles = future repairs. Unless the wiring is cheap junk, which then it is also the wiring, 😄.

[@lukestrawwalker]

The old man bought a 2000 Ford Escort, which was the last year or next to last year they built them. He bought it for a work car, as he drove 52 miles to the nuke plant each day so 104 miles round trip, and he wore out cars with sheer mileage... Course he ended up with neuropathy and post-polio syndrome started crippling him within a year, so he parked it and my brother drove it once in awhile for several years. When my wife started teaching school, he let her start driving it just to keep it from going to pot parked. Still gave some problems and I had to fix it... stupid thing would burn up the wiring plugs on the headlights... crazy. It was wired with this very small thin light duty "doorbell" wire, not regular 16 gauge wiring like every other car... this light duty half-size crap.... when the A/C quit I traced it to the stupid module under the battery-- found a video where a guy did surgery on his and fixed it with a transistor from Radio Shack for $1.35, but Ford charges $700 for that module. I decided "Eff it" and just installed new wiring from the low pressure cycling switch on the evaporator filter can sending power straight down to the A/C compressor clutch, same exact way my old '77 Chevy Suburban A/C was wired... screw the high pressure cutout switch that went to the module... I wired it parallel to the existing wiring actually so if that side of the circuit still worked, so be it... got the compressor to run and cycle which is all that mattered... it worked! They had moved manufacturing of those cars down to Mexico, and they must have engineered them down there too, because they were designed and built like so much cheap JUNK... we finally gave the car to my cousin who's roommate wrecked her car at college, and her Dad wouldn't spring to get her a used flivver to get around in... It ran and worked, but I was glad to be rid of it...

[@danmaggert7119]

no the 2+2 is broke down I work on mine nonstop

[@Joey966]

Oh no, you mentioned the 2+2, get ready for the questions.

[@Hinesfarm-Indiana]

Great video