Custom Thomas Bulk Trailer with DCP IH 9100

Well, September has come and gone, and so has Potato harvest on the family farm, Ayotte Farms. As I mentioned in last months article, I was fortunate enough to be able to take a week off from my "Real Job" and head home to help with harvest. I wont delve into it too much here because below I have some pictures and a small write up of the equipment and how we do things.

One thing I have just finished up in time for the 1/64th scale harvest is a Thomas Equipment bulk body trailer. Trailer versions of bulk bodies aren't too common, but are out there prowling the roads of my area. It took me a LONG time to build this, but I am very happy with the final results. I started out by designing the entire unit in my head and then transferring that to AutoCad which I used to draw up the parts needed to make this model which I could then have the parts laser cut on sheet styrene. When I got all the parts, I had to sand, assemble and scratch build a few parts which I didn't think about during the CAD phase. Once assembled, I primed it and painted it Thomas orange. I finished it off with decals which I made myself, and they are exact duplicates of the originals. It will be the perfect addition to my potato equipment collection.

2005 Harvest - Ayotte Farms

As I mentioned above, I went home in September to work harvest, I was home the week of September 19-25 and I worked all week, with only 1 day off due to rain. We were blessed and harvest went good and the quality of the potatoes we harvested was TOP notch. Below you will find some pictures with brief descriptions of what's happening.

How the field looks after burning down the Potato Vines Ford TW-25 with Thomas 2 Row Windrower New Holland TM 190 with Thomas 4 Row Windrower       Ford TW-25 with Thomas 2 Row Windrower 7130 Magnum Loading up Ford F800 Potato Truck New Holland TM 190 with Thomas 4 Row Windrower       Magnum 7130 with Grimme Harvester Yours Truly Driving LNT8000 Spud Truck "Racking" Potatoes, we remove rocks, rotten, etc... that the Harvester crew missed.       LNT8000 Unloading in the Potato House Telescopic Bin Piler Piling the Potatoes In the Potato House Got Taters?

I know a picture is worth a thousand words, which is why I thought I would start out with them. This is a VERY brief overview, but here is the general steps taken to harvest potatoes in our area.

• Prior to harvest, the vines/plants are burned using a chemical. If necessary, we pass a flail chopper over the fields to cut down the vines. This makes harvest very much easier because the vines could get tangled in the machinery.
• Come Harvest time, we hit the fields with the harvester, windrowers and trucks. The windrowers dig the potatoes out of the ground and place them in a row as to allow the harvester to dig more rows of potatoes at once. For example this year we ran 2 windwrowers, for a total of 6 rows, +2 rows the Harvester dug, means we were digging 8 rows at a time.
• On the harvester we have a crew of 4 people who pick out the rocks, rotten potatoes, vines, and anything which is NOT a potato.
• The potatoes then ride up the boom conveyor into the potato truck, which bring the potatoes to the potato house.
• At the potato house, we once again sift thru and remove any undesirable things.
• The potatoes then make their way up the bin piler and end up in large bins in the potato house, the bins are climate controlled to keep the potatoes happy. Potatoes need to be in a dark, cool place with a bit of moisture.

Marketplace

Unusually this month there hasn't been TOOO much commotion in the world of toy trucks. But there have been a few notable things which have hit the streets. The first of which is the new car transporter trailer from SpecCast, this has been something almost as highly requested as a dump truck...now we got both! It seems to be a very nice piece, the rear ramps retract & extend for realistic loading, but the upper deck does not move. While I like this trailer & truck, I still long for a true car carrier truck & trailer combo. Coming soon we have a little something the dairy fans may be interested in, DCP30971 which is a IH 9200i Tractor with Dry Van done for Renaissance Nutrition.

Till next month, Keep those little trucks rollin!

Dave