120 years of Johnston Farming

From William I. Johnston to McKenna Quigley, William's great-great-great grandaughter

In 1852, at age 15 William Irvin Johnston immigrated from Scotland with his mother, Mary Campbell, and siblings on the sailing ship Columbia. They landed in New York and went from there to Joliet where Mary had an uncle.

In 1862 William enlisted in the 100th Illinois Volunteer Infantry where he served until 1865. In 1867 he bought 80 acres of land and built a small house in Will County, Wesley Towhship.

In the picture is William I Johnston, Martha G. Hazelton and their family ca. 1890. Walter I. Johnston, father of Lester, Margaret, and Francis, is about 6 and sits in the front.

William I Johnston and family, ca. 1895

William's house, ca. 1910

When William retired from farming in 1902 he had 320 acres and the house (moved up from the field and expanded - the site of Willard and Jackie's home today) and out-buildings that form the core of the Johnston farm to this day. (Though most of the buildings have been replaced by grandsons Lester and Francis and great grtandson Willard.)

The low part of the house on the left was William's original house. The maple trees lining the lane were destroyed by ice storms in the 1930s.

The Farm: 180 Acres ofWetlands

The land in Wesley township had to be tiled and drained to make good farm land. This involved building a series of sizable drainage ditches out from the larger creeks, and then laying a pattern of drain tiles in the fields.

The drainage was organized by districts and William I. Johnston organized the district around his original 80 acres.

The original trenching might have been done by machine, but the repair work was done by hand.

The waterways near the Johnston farm

Wetlands work. (5-18-1938)

Walter (left), Lester, and Willie Hazelton (right).
All of the fields around Wilmington have to be drained using buried tile. Willie Hazelton dug this
trench (either for new tile or to repair old). The only tools used were spade, shovel, and a
rounded tiling shovel for shaping the bottom of the trench. The tiles are baked clay, and they
are just laid end-to-end. The water seeps in through the cracks between the sections.

Some of the laterals ran out from the drain ditch, but some were parallel, and some were laid
to drain specific low spots in the fields .When the fields dry out in the spring you can
see the tile paths as parts of the filed that dry out first.

Johnston area of Wesley TWP, Will Co., IL

This map shows William I. Johnston's farm ca. 1910 in the NE part of Wesley TPW, Will Co., Il.
William had retired in 1902 and had started to divide his farm between his two youngest sons, John Arthur and Walter Irvin. The house on William's remaining piece of land is the site of the modern home of Willard and Jackie Johnston.

The farming branches of Walter I. Johnston's family.

The farming branches of Walter I. Johnston's family

The horse power of the early years

Walter Johnston, ca. 1900

Walter was very good with horses.

Walter I. Johnston and his plow horses, ca. 1910.

WEJ: Grandpa Johnston was not a small man, these horses are big!
LWJ: I like this picture - my Dad was very good with horses - and this picture is from an era before I remember him. (LWJ was born in 1913.)

Draft animals made farming as we know it possible. The Walter Johnston farm would typically have eight draft horses, and a plow team that pulled a two-bottom, moldboard plow, was made up of six horses.

Most of the horses were purchased at farm sales or horse barns for $150-$300 (2010 = $3,450-$6,900), a few were raised on the home farm.

LWJ: A significant fraction of the farm output - as high as 50% - went to feeding the draft animals, which consumed hay and oats. The remainder of the crop was sold for cash.

A day of plowing with six or eight horses involved getting up at 4:30am. It was a several hour job to care for the horses - currying and feeding them, then you had to shovel the manure out and change the straw bedding. Walter pulled a two bottom plow with six horses, and it was an hour's job just to put all of the harnesses on. The horses were the prime movers, but they took a lot of care and a lot of feed to keep them going. I used to help with the currying. We would use curry combs, and comb the horses from head to stern to get the dirt out. That was one thing that the horses liked - they loved to have you curry them. If you saw the planks on the sides of the stalls, after years you would find them all battered up. What we did was when the curry comb got a wad of wool and dirt in it, you would slam it against the wall to get that off. Then you would go back to the horses to get the next load.

When this was all done, then you had to eat your own breakfast, and if you got into the field by 7:00am you were doing pretty good.

The horses would plow for a couple of hours, then they had to rest. My dad would sit at the end of the field for 15-10 minutes. They stopped at noon for the horses to have their "lunch" - so too speak. They ate quite a bit of feed. They would get water in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, when they were on harness. After a long day's work on a hot day, I can remember there was one old horse in particular that would come up to the water tank, and she would shove her whole head into the water. She just loved to do that.

The plow team would get in about 5:30 in the afternoon - it would depend on the weather conditions. If it was hot, you would have to give your horses more rest, and the day was shorter. Plowing in those days was a time consuming job. Dad plowed with a two bottom plow - 2, 14" plows - so you plowed a strip 28" wide, and you would be a couple of weeks just plowing one field.

Dad did not completely switch his plowing to tractors until he bought an Allis Chalmers E in 1929.

Plowing, ca. 1900.

This is probably on the Grimes farm in Iowa (Laura Grimes became Walter's wife).

This is more what Walter's plow team would look like. [DB1]

The home place, 1935.

The animal barn is on the left and the corn crib on the right. The stock fences were arranged so that the gates opened and latched against the barn forming different passage ways depending on which animals were going where. The windmill (center) was 60’ tall, and was used to fill the stock watering trough

The home place, fall, 1935, and the family car (1927 Dodge).

The coal shed is on the left, and there is a plank walkway from there to the cement walk by the kitchen door.

William I Johnston's barn

Farm life ca. 1900 revolved around the animals, especially the horses that served as draft animals.

William I.’s barn was compact and well thought out as the center piece for animal care .

LWJ: It had to be. If your horses were not well cared for, you buried them. And then you had no motive power. If your cows, pigs, and chickens dies, you lost your source of meat and eggs.

By the end of the summer, most of the inside of the barn - the hay mow on the ground floor, and most of the mezzanine area - was filled with hay for the winter. The piles of hay were not just a random pile, they were carefully layered, and because of this you could build an almost vertical wall of hay.

The hay was the winter feed for the horses and cows, but it also served as insulation. The barn walls were also “lined” on the inside with boards for insulation against cold, and were about 6” thick. (I.e. boards outside, 6” studs, and boards inside.) The animals had to be protected from the cold during the winter.

Thinking of Mrs. O’Learly’s barn burning down, I don’t know why more barns didn’t burn down. all during the winter, the morning and evening “chores” - caring for the animals - was done in complete darkness. You took a kerosene lantern to the barn to provide a little bit of light. However, the entire inside of the barn was filled with loose combustibles - dry hay stacked to the ceiling, straw, dust, etc. A kicked over lantern would set the whole place on file.

When they were shelling corn, the sheller had a fan the blew the husks, silks, and bits of cob out one side and the grain went out the other. Walter would collect this stuff and put it in the stock shelter. I remember once it was three feet in the shed. The pigs loved rooting around in that stuff. You came out in the morning and there was not a pig in sight. Then they heard the slop bucket, and hogs popped up everywhere from under that pile of husks.

The horse stalls were in back, on the south side. Every stall had a manger in front, and in the corner of the manger was a feed box that you put grain in, and you put hay in the rest of it. There was a trap door in the oat bin. You would fill a bushel basket and carry it back to the stalls. We measured it out using an old wash basin as a scoop. The horses went in and out of the door in the south-east corner, it was a sliding door. The door on the back side was mostly used to shovel manure out.

The little hallway in front of the horse stables had personnel doors at both ends. There was a calf pen next to the hallway - it was big enough that you could put a couple of cows in there if you wanted. In the NE corner was the cow area. There was a feed bunk in front and behind that the stanchions for the cows. You did not have stalls like for the horses, but you did have the stanchions that were a “trap” for the cow’s head. You got the head through and then closed and latched the stanchion, and the cow could not get its head out.

This barn was the center of operations when horses were the motive power for the farm. The building was so specialized that when tractors replaced horses, it was torn down.

This "exploded" architectural view shows the major functions of the barn. The mezzanine floor is at the height of the top of the oat bin, and is open over the area where the hay wagons were unloaded with the overhead trolly and hay hook. (Description by LWJ, drawing by WEJ.)

LWJ: There was a little hill in front of the big doors, and Dad was able to drive a team of horses pulling a load of hay right in the door. The horses would be pretty much right up against the stalls when you got the wagon all the way in.

In the peak of the barn there was a track that ran across the barn (N-S). On the track there was a traveling trolly. When the hay wagon was all the way in - with the horses as far forward as they could go - the trolly was over the middle of the wagon. The trolly would stay stationary in the middle - over the wagon - and the hay fork was on a rope that went up to the trolly. The rope came down one of the big posts at the side of the open area, and through a pully at the bottom. I had a team of horses on the hay fork cart outside the big doors. That two-wheeled cart was actually the front end of a wagon. The rope had a hook on the end that was hooked to the cart, and I would drive the horses away from the barn - it must have been 150’ - and the hay hook would go up and latch on the trolly. Then you could pull the trolly along the track and dump the hay in the mow. Then you had to level the pile of hay, stomp it down, and get it packed in. The hay grapples were big - 7’ across. They were stored on the high mezzanine over the big doors.

You put some pretty big loads on the hook. Something that was loose and fluffy like straw, you could take half a hay rack load in one big bunch.

There was a mezzanine floor over the oat bin and over the cows. The trolly could be fixed so that it would dump on the mezzanine, with some difficulty. When you got the thing unloaded, you backed the horses up, and down the little hill in front of the door, and went and got another load.

Dad would feed off of the mezzanine floor first. He would pitch hay off the mezzanine down into the driveway when the hay rack wasn’t in there - which it wasn’t normally.

There was a sloping ladder at the end of the driveway that went up to the mezzanine. You mother [ALJ] and old Smokey and Francis loved to climb up that ladder and jump off of the mezzanine into a pile of hay on the floor. You would not believe how Smokey could go up that ladder. He just went flying up, and all three of them would jump off onto the hay.

Francis took the barn down [ca. 1945]. It had become obsolete and wasn’t being used. He built a much bigger building - he used one end to feed cattle out of, and he used the other end for machine storage. Also, the barn was built from heavy timbers, and he wanted those to build the first of the overhead bins for corn storage down at Vance’s.

Managing hay in the barn

Haying on the C. E. Grimes farm, ca. 1900. [HG]

The boy is likely Bernard Grimes, Hazel's brother.

The farm

The drainage was organized by districts and William I. Johnston organized the district around his original 80 acres.

The original trenching might have been done by machine, but the repair work was done by hand.

The drainage ditch and tile runs around William's farm

Tiling on the C. E. Grimes farm, ca. 1900.

LWJ: I remember a machine something like this, and especially I remember the truck. I got to ride on the truck. It was one of the old ones with no cab, and the steering wheel directly over the front axel.

Wetlands work. (5-18-1938)

Some of the laterals ran out from the drain ditch, but some were parallel, and some were laid
to drain specific low spots in the fields.When the fields dry out in the spring you can
see the tile paths as parts of the filed that dry out first.

Home

Harvest, early 1900s

Walter picked his corn by hand until the mid-1920s, and well beyond that at the ends of the field in order to avoid loss where the combine turned around.

LWJ: When picking by hand, a horse-drawn wagon would move down the field in rows that were already picked The picker would operate two rows over two rows and picked from both rows. He threw the ears into the wagon. When the wagon took the next row, the guy piking moved over two rows instead of one. A right-handed man would use a husking hook (knife) fastened to a piece of leather that was worn on the right hand. He would grab an ear of corn with his left hand and pull the knife down the ear slicing the husk open. With his right hand he would twist the ear out of the husk and throw it into the wagon. Most of the husk stayed on the stalk.(You wanted to keep the husks out of the wagon, because they reduced the crib capacity when the corn was unloaded.)

There were two kinds of husking knives. A palm hook like my dad used was a leather mitten and you strapped them onto your right hand. There was also one that had a thumb hook. The wagon had a high side - a "bang board" - opposite the picker so that the ear of corn could be thrown high and not fly over the wagon. If you look at the wagon in the picture above you can see the bang board on the left hand side of the wagon.

As a kid I have ridden in the wagon while my dad was over on the side picking. I have never done a lot of hand picking, but I have done some. When we got into machine picking we used to open the field up by picking the end rows. We did this so that when the tractor turned around at the end of the rows that you would not knock down unpicked corn and waste it.Tthis is not a problem now because the picking head is out in front rather than being towed behind a tractor.

A top notch man could pick a hundred bushels a day, and my dad was know as a hundred bushel-a-day man. That was a reputation for being a very hard worker. You have to contrast this hundred bushels with the same operation today. A few years ago when I visited Francis, I pulled in about dark and Willard and Douglas had just finished picking 15,000 bushel of corn that day with two modern combines.

Unloading the day's harvest into the crib, C. E. Grimes farm, ca. 1900

Note that the horses are operating the conveyer. "Smiling Joe Day." [HG]




Picking and hushing corn by hand using a husking knife/peg. [WEJ][LHF1][GS1]

The 1920s - experimenting with tractors

Walter’s first experience with tractors was a Rumely OilPull that he purchased in 1919.

LWJ: The Rumely was the first tractor that my Dad bought. The thing up in front was nothing more than a radiator, and the exhaust pipe was a venturi. Exhausting upwards it pulled air in from the bottom through the radiator fins. The coolant was oil instead of water - these things ran hotter than all-get-out. There were more of these things used in belt operation (e.g. running threshing machines) than any other make of tractor in that age, but they were also used for plowing.

He bought the thing from Whitmore-Cassingham hardware store downtown [Wilmington], and the main street - Water Street - was gravel in those days. He drove it up the hill heading out of Wilmington to the country - to the farm. I was “parked” at Grandpa’s at the time [William I. was retired, and lived in the Octagon house in Wilmington]. I guess you could say thatI was in custodianship while he went to buy the tractor.

The OilPull was spark ignition and ran on carburated kerosene. You started it on gasoline, and when it warmed up, you switched it to kerosene. I remember that the gasoline tank was a little tank mounted on one fender. It was used for starting purposes only.

The engine was started on gasoline, but even so the tractor hard to start. To start the engine you had to put a lever into notches in the big exposed fly wheel on the side, and then “rock” the flywheel back and forth to get a piston positioned just before top-dead-center, and then giving a big pull to compress the cylinder gas and fire the spark plug. The flywheel notches were designed so that if the engine started, the lever released as the flywheel came around.

Kerosene, however, was a very low octane fuel, and it would detonate like heck, except that it used water injection.

That engine was so far ahead of other engines at that time it was unbelievable. Piston engines even in WWII aircraft, during JATO - jet assisted takeoff, where you had to get all of the power you could out of an engine to get off of the ground with a heavy load or a short runway - they used water injection too. The first aircraft cylinder that I ran on the old CDoE (?) engine in the test Lab at Chevron Research used water injection. It was a means of controlling detonation. It cooled the charge down to keep your mixture from igniting before it was supposed to. For the Rumely that was a problem, because at home we had hard water. So you fed lime water into the combustion system and you had problems with limestone building up in the wong places.

The advantage that the Rumely had over horses was more ground covered. He pulled a four bottom plow with that thing, and could cover about 1.5 acres/day (??). Six horses could only pull a two bottom plow. These tractors were used by Walter primarily for plowing, but they were also used to power threshing machines.

He only kept that tractor about two years. Quite frankly, from an operational and engineering point of view, it was beyond him. It was hard for him to get it started. After about two years he sold the Rumely to John Marshall, and went completely back to horses.
Walter did not buy another tractor until the Waterloo Boy came along. It was simpler than the Rumely, but not as advanced in many ways.

Walter bought aWaterloo Boy in the late 1920s. He used this tractor primarily for plowing, but they were also used to power threshing machines.

LWJ: The thing that tickles me about this picture is that back here where the driver stands is the valve mechanism sticking right out in the open. Every few hours you would have to grab an oil can and squirt these full of oil. And here was the magneto, and it had a level over here to shift the drawbar back and forth. The radiator was sideways and the engine cross ways. The wheels were gear drive.

I was in high school - probably the later part - when dad bought the first Allis Chalmers, so he must have bought the Waterloo in the late 20s. He did not keep the Waterloo too long, and his next tractor - about 1929 - was an Allis model E, which did quite a lot of work.

Waterloo Boy showing the open engine valves. [HK1]

Beginnings of the modern tractor

Walter’s third tractor was an Allis Chalmers, Model E 20-35 (20 drawbar horsepower, 35 belt horsepower) that he purchased in 1928 or 29. This tractor had a conventional 4 cylinder gasoline engine that started with a front crank. It was much easier to start that the old Rumely tractors.

LWJ: When AC got into the farm tractor business, they were the one that developed the rubber tired tractor. That Model U, it was something. They got Barney Oldfield1to drive it down the highway at 60 miles/hr.

After that I bought a WC and Dad bought a WC and a UC. Figure 7.42 shows that first WC. I bought the second WC with rubber tires. After that, I cut the steel rims off of the first WC and welded rubber tire rims on, and put rubber tires on it. The two WCs and the UC were the ones that really became the tractor operation at home. They were the ones that ended up putting the horses out of business. Dad kept a team of horses - two of them - for odds and ends of work, but eventually sold those too, and did not have anything but tractors. By 1939-40 he did not have any more horses.

After I left [1942], John Deere came into the picture. Francis got the first Model A, and then several more, and from then on it was all John Deere, and the Allis Chalmers soon disappeared [from the Johnston farm].


	Walter Johnston's AC model U, early 1930s.
	Barney Oldfield (“The Speed King”) laps Indiana Fairgrounds’ 1-mile dirt track with the Ford 999 at 60 mph, fastest speed ever obtained on a closed circuit. Although Barney Oldfield retired from active competition while motorsports was still in its infancy, his achievements and his colorful style combined to make him the spiritual father of American racing. [FM]

Farming in the era of mechanization - 1930s

Spring

Seed bed preparation and planting with a disk and drag in the foreground, corn planter in the background. (5-18-1938)
(Lester Johnston is driving the Allis WC, on the left, and Walter is driving the UC,
on the right.)

The last cultivation of the year. (6-1-1938)
Walter Johnston on the UC (left) and Lester on the WC.

Summer work

Community work - rebuilding Lester Schroeder's barn. (Lester Schoreder was Walter's son-in-law.)

Walter slopping his pigs.

Pig trough

WEJ: Why put the slop through a trap door, rather than over the top?

LWJ: Well, I’ll tell you - those hogs knew what was coming, and they are climbing over each other and trying to get over the fence. If you dumped a pail over the top you would have them all over you. You can see in the picture - the guy sticking up is not standing on the ground. He is standing up on the feed trough. “I’m going to get my share” is what he is saying.

In otherwords, the swill is poured into the trough through the trapdoor to prevent a pig “riot”. The pig looking over the fence in the pictureis not big, he has climbed up on top of the feed trough to try and get more food.

The feed trough was about 16’ long, and it usually was just two planks nailed together.

Necessary self-sufficiency

From the early days through the end of the 1930s, when technology and farming changed and farmers became better off financially, even relatively “modern” farms like Walter’s and William’s before him, grew all of their own food. They had a variety of animals to provide meat, eggs, and dairy food: pigs, chickens, and cattle. They also grew sweet corn, squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, and apples, all of which could be canned or otherwise preserved, to provide food through the winter. Walter also loved strawberries and so he did the extra work to make them grow in a climate that was really too cold for them.

Apart from operating expenses of the farm, they paid cash for as little as possible because, especially during the economic depression of the 1930s (which was also when Walter and Laura, a school teacher, were paying off John Arthur’s debt) they had very little cash. They would pay to have pigs and cattle slaughtered and butchered, they paid for sugar and salt, they paid for anthracite (“hard”) coal for heating during the winter.

Walter grinding corn for feed for the animals

Walter Johnston grinding feed on his farm in Nov. 1934. (AC model E tractor)

This was a year or two before Walter got electricity on the farm.

Hooking the hay rack to the bailer

LWJ: That is Francs’ bailing rig - he was the only one in the country that had one - but that is not a tractor that my dad had. I think that it is an Oliver. Lester Schroeder had an Oliver, so it might be his.

Enterprising youth run a “small business” (“custom bailing”).

Clarence (?) Erickson in front, left to right in the back: Orvyl Beaver, Francis (?), and ??.

Seperating wheat or oats

Separating wheat or oats on the Henry Olhues (sp?) farm - the first farm that Lester rented. (1935)

Horses pulled the hay rack up in front of Willie Hazelton’s separator that is being belt driven from the Allis E in the foreground. The grain is going into the truck, and the straw is piling up in back. The building is a cement block corn crib, and is still there today. Lester put the extended rims on the E for better flotation in muddy fields.

WEJ: Why such a long belt?

LWJ: Well, that dates back to steam days. The steam engine had to be back far enough so that the horses could pull the hay racks - a bundle of racks - so that they came in straight next to the feeder (of the threshing machine). Also, you had to have enough belt weight so that your belts wouldn’t slip. You are transmitting 35-50 horsepower. The longest belts that I ever saw were on steam engines, and the one in the picture looks like a steam belt.

The belt is about a foot wide, and you had to have your tractor aligned so that the belts would stay on the pulleys. Sometimes the load would get so high that the belts would begin to slip. If they slipped enough, they would be thrown off the pulleys, so you had to dress the belts frequently. The dressing was to make the belt sticky so that it would not slip, but rather transmit all the power through to the cylinder on the threshing machine. The belt dressing came in a stick form and it was almost like a tar - we also used rosin.

The bundle wagon was a hay rack. It was pulled by horses - they are headed the other direction in the picture. I think that is wheat stubble and he is blowing straw out the back side of the thresher. I don’t know why we had the Model E there - they usually used the other tractor.

That was dad’s tractor and Uncle Willie’s threshing machine. The tractor was the Model E, or "20-35," the WC would not have enough power to run that thing. The grain is going into the truck and the straw is going into the big pile.

WEJ: That is a big pile - what did they do with it?

LWJ: You let it rot. You used it to collect manure in the stables. Once in a great while you would bail it, but for the most part it was waste. When it rotted down you hauled it out and spread it on the field with manure. I have pitched tons of the stuff with a pitch fork. If you had it in a pasture where stock could get at it, they would eat part of it, and they would kind of make their own “nest” along the fence. It was good shelter from snow banks, and so on. You never see a straw stack any more.

Farming in the mid-20th century

Lester left the farm for California in 1942 - he did not want to leave, but he had no choice: His dust and grass alergies were so bad that they debilitating during the summer and fall.

Walter and Francis, with help from Vance Jones, farmed William's original farm and expanded it considerably in the period 1942 to the 1960s when Walter retired.

Lester drving a John Deere R in the 1950s

Lester visiting the farm in the mid 1950s

Modern farming - William I. Johnston's farm in the past 20 years

By the 2000s, William I. Johnston's original farm is now greatly expanded and is farmed by Willard and Douglas Johnston, William's great grandsons, Jackie, WIllard's wife, and by Alan Johnston, Willard's son.

Willard lives in a new house built next to the site of William's house after he moved it up from the field in the early 1970s.

Willard is teaching his granddaughter, McKenna to farm.

Disking, ca. 2000.

Disk rig, April 4, 2003

Spraying fertizilere (liquid nitrogen) prior to planting, April 4, 2003

Note that this is the "Batmobile" (grain cart) in its spraying configuration.

A 23 row soy bean planter, ca. 2000.

Combine with an twelve row corn picking head, ca. 2000.

The batmobile with its high-flotation tires was designed to off-load the big combines in the field. This 12 row. John Deere 9600 combine can only make 2-3 rounds of the filed before it must unload the corn. It will pick and shell 10,000-15,000 bushles per day.

Improved effectiveness during harvest through innovation

Successful Farming

Nov., 2000 (?)

Grain Cart Conversion

By Dave Mowitz
Machinery Editor and Chester Peterson Jr., photographer
Next to sluggish grain dryers and equipment breakdowns, getting grain away from combines is a major contributor to slowing down harvest. The fanners featured on these pages have created unique solutions to sidestep the problem.

For Willard and Jackie Johnston of Wilmington. lllinois, the answer is a converted truck. Their ''floater cart'' consis of a modified commercial truck applicator rigged with a grain box and 14 inch-diametcr unloading auger.”We harvest com with a 12-row combine and hardly ever stop as a result of using this truck,'' Willard says, boasting the floater cart's capacity. ''Jackie usually drives the floater cart while I run the combine. It keeps her almost busier than it does me when we unload on-the-go.''

High-speed operation
The truck. an International Silver Wheels model. came equipped with an automatic tnmsmission. flotation suspension and tires, and an automatic transmission. It was originally built as a commercial sprayer by Hack Enterprises of Frankfort, Illinois.

The Johnstons purchased a used New Leader fertilizer spreader to mount on the truck for use as a grain box. Willard and his crew then fabricated a hopper, equipped it with a folding auger. and bolted it to the back of the box. The hopper receives grain from the box's ex.isting belt conveyor that operates the length of the floor.

Everything on the cart is hydraulically controlled from the cab. "Plus. the automatic transmission makes matching speed with a combine a pleasure." Willard adds.

Other modifications made in the conversion include the addition of sideboards to boost the box's capacity to approximately 450 bushels. The truck's flotation tires allow it to operate in practicalJy any tield conditions. A beefy engine provides operating speeds up to 20 mph in the field, and up to 45 mph when going down the road empty.

''The beauty of this system is that it doesn't tie up a $120,000 tractor or involve the use of a grain cart that could cause a lot of field compaction in our deep, black soils," Willard says. "Actually, the floater cart eliminates the need for another grain hauler and another combine."

The Johnstons' son, Alan, converts the flotation cart back to a truck sprayer to apply liquid fertilizer and herbicide in the spring. Or the floater can easily be adapted to spread dry fertilizer, if needed.
Also part of the Johnstons' crew are Willard's father, Francis, brother, Doug, and partner, Vance Jones.

Managing the harvest

Alan Johnston (Walter's great grandson) hauls 500 bushles at a time from the field to the grain dryer. Three of the trucks operate contuously to keep up with the combines.

Storing and drying your grain

Having the facilities for storing and drying your harvest optimizes the return on investment and work by saving the cost of commercial storage while you watch the grain futures market for a good time to sell at a high price.

This facility was built by Francis, Vance, Willard, and Douglas in 19XX and has beed expanded several times.

By 2013 it is capable of storing XX (250,000??) bushles of grain which is a significant fraction of the whole harvest.

Commercial drying runs $0.07 (16% moisture) - 0.75 (35%) and storage is $0.04/month for the first 3-5 months after harvest, dropping to $0.02/month thereafter for corn and a bit more for beans. If the grain is harvested at 24% moisture then commercial druing cost is $0.30/bu or $75,000. In Oct. 2013 the price of corn delivered in December is $4.50/bu so commercial drying and storage (assuming a corn crop) is almost 10% of the sale price.

Expanding the drying and storage facility.

Summer work

Modern equiment for tiling: Laser controlled diging machines.

The use of the laser control was Francis' innovation.

Expanding the drying and storage facility.

Installing a new grain dryer.

Putting up a new elevator leg

The conveyer buckets and mechanism for the new leg.

Putting up a new storage bin

Willard is teaching his granddaughter, McKenna to farm.

McKenna with "her" tractor, Oct. 2011

References

All uncredited pictures were taken by someone in the Johnston or Grimes families.
All unattributed comments are from Lester W. Johnston, Walter's oldest son and William's grandson.

[DB1] http://blogs.dailybreeze.com/history/page/13/

[FM] http://www.ford.com/motorsport/1-0history.html

[GS1] http://www.growingseasons.com/Growing_Seasons/Harvesting_Corn.html

[HG] Hazel Grimes photo. Hazel was the younger sister of Laura Grimes, Walter's wife.

[HK1] - Harvey K, theharv58, Taken on September 5, 2010, Milton, ON, CA, http://www.flickr.com/photos/23775118@N06/6803675426/

[LHF1] - http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org