Ok.  Here is my first video blog.  Unintentional at first.  Now a quick way to give you another insight into life over here.

No Southern Indiana pictures. How about these?

The pictures I took in southern Indiana did not turn out very well.  I was using my phone camera from a moving car.  What could go wrong?  Blurred, too high, too late, too low, too soon, and finger on the lens.  Yep.  When I do it - I do it right.  So I have two other pictures I thought I would toss up here.  The first is my daughter and me heading down the road, wide open on the previously mentioned 4020.  1964 Synchro-Range.  Diesel.  1 family owned.

The next picture is from the Annual Tippecanoe Steam & Gas Power Show in Battleground, IN.  (Battleground is right next to Lafayette and Purdue university.)

I took picture (with the phone camera) because it reminded me of a build-it-yourself from Popular Mechanics magazine in the 1950's.   Yes it is a Gibson tractor, but it does look homemade.

the John Deere 4020

I was cruising youtube whlie waiting on an after hours meeting and came across this link:4020 pulling wheelies.  At first I thought - Wow! How cool!  Then I remembered.
When I was 6 or 7, I saw dad pull a wheelie while pulling a 24' field cultivator.  Not just any wheelie.  The cultivator was on the 3 point hitch which means all of it's weight was being supported by the tractor.  Our 4020 did not have duals or weights on at that time which made the tractor VERY light.  So light that when he lifted the cultivator the front wheels came off the ground about 1-1/2 feet.  Dad calmly drove out of the back yard, turned down the road for about a tenth of a mile and then turned into the field and stopped.  His hands were not on the steering wheel, only the throttle and the left side of the seat.
The show did not end there.  He then unfolded and put the cultivator into the ground.  As he took off across the field the front wheels came up again and did not touch ground until he hit the other end of the field. A good 1/4 mile wheelie. He made six or seven rounds that way because he was re-tilling the part of the field that had not been planted due to a rain out.  (the duals and weights were off because this was also his planter tractor.) Poke around on youtube for more tractor videos.  or better yet post some of your own on there and tell me about it. I'll post their links here.  We need to preserve our tractor history almost as much as our soil.

Red Tech - CaseIH 535 quadtrac Steiger

Ok. A little late on this one. But I did get to ride in a CaseIH 535 quadtrac Steiger.  A ton of screen options and buttons.  If you are over 50 this is probably a little intimidating. I can't imagine what these 70 yr old farmers must be thinking.
But the great part is that after a couple of minutes - you realize that it is pretty self-explanatory. You pick out the speed you like, turn on autosteer, and go.  That simple - unless you start playing with the gauges.  That is where you can determine that by running the tillage tool an inch shallower you can cut the engine to 80% and still run .3 - .5 mph faster.  Imagine that - increasing efficiency in fuel and time while having autosteer keeping overlap coverage to a minimum.