Having a good story for model farm always adds to your display. If you are in a contest it can win points with judges. This month "Down on the Model Farm" follows the story of Tim Grube’’s well known 1/64 Sawyer Seed Farm.

Tim placed second at 2003 National Farm Toy Show, first place at the 2004 St. Louis and first place at the 2004 Ripon, Wi toy show with the Sawyer Seed Farm. This is not Tim’’s first big display. In 2002 Tim competed with a large 1,000 + head dairy farm called Udder Chaos. Tim enjoys having descriptive names for his displays. Udder Choas says it all about a big dairy. What does Sawyer Seed Farm mean? Its simple "Sow Your Seed". Sawyer Seed Farm raises both corn and soy bean seeds. Tim is already hard at work at his next big display for 2004. We can not tell you what it is as Tim wants to surprise every one at the National but you can bet it has another creative name.

Sawyer Seed Farm Offices and Ware House

The Sawyer Seed Company is located in central Wisconsin, about half way between Madison and Green Bay, in a little town called Eberle. Eberle is a fictional town in honor of Tim’s friend Bill Eberle who is a well known toy displayer featured in the January 2004 "Down on the Model Farm". In addition to the main farm at Eberle, Sawyer has two other locations not too far away. One farm is located in Red Granite, WI and another in Plover, WI.

The farm at Red Granite raises sweet corn seed for company’s like Chiquita and Krier foods. The Plover location is in the hart of potato country. This farms rotates rye, soybeans and wheat with area potato farmers. Roven Farms built by John Schomberg is a well known neighbor to Sawyer Seed in Plover. John often posts pictures of Roven Farms on ToyTractorShow.com’’s Toy Talk.

All the seed corn is raised on the home farm in Eberle. Sawyer Seeds raises nearly 8,000 acres of seed annually. Seed corn accounts for 3,000 of those acres. Most of the seed corn is sold to Wisconsin customers like Bill Eberle’’s Xanadu dairy display farm, Tim Grube’’s Udder Chaos dairy display farm and John Schomburg’’s Roven Farm’’s display grain farm. Swayer  even sells to TTT owner, Jason Hasert's Sprucewood Fams grain and canning crop display farm based in Western, New York.

 

Roven Farms built by John Schoburg is a Sawyer Seed Customer

Bill Eberle's Xanadu Dairy Farm is a Sawyer Seed Customer

Tim Grube's Udder Chaos Dairy Display is a Sawyer Seed Customer

Sprucewood Farms built by Jason Hasert is a Sawyer Seed Customer

 

Raising seed corn is a much more involved process than one would think. The process starts in a laboratory at Sawyer Seeds corporate office. Here the staff chooses the location and populations of the varieties to be planted. Planting does not begin in the fields until late April or early May. When the farm is planting, the head lands are left unplanted. Leaving the front and back of the fields open so the plants are not run over during re-planting, cultivation and the male-row harvest. Sawyer’s uses 4-2-4 row configuration. The numbers refer to the spacing of male and female rows. Four female rows are planted next to two male rows followed by four additional female rows. This row arrangement is done through out the field. Sawyers uses two planters. A 16 row White planter and a 12 row John Deere planter. Bulk planters can not be used, because the seed would mix. The planters must have conventional boxes where male and female plant rows can be separated.

 

Sawyer Seeds Soy Bean Test Plots

After the initial planting is done, a male row planter will come in approximately one week later to replant the male rows. The male row planters are 6 row planter tool bars with only the outside units in place. Due to different germination periods of the female plants, some varieties will have the male rows planted for a third time. This way it is ensured that the female plants are fertilized by the male pollen.

Sawyer Seed Farms Planting A Seed Corn Field

Example Of How The Male Row Corn Planter Works

When the plant has tasseled and germination is completed the male rows are chopped by special male row forage harvesters. The remaining female rows have their tassels plucked by machines called detasslers. Detasslers are tall machines that look like self-propelled sprayers. They are self-propelled with rollers spaced 30" apart, mounted on the front. Each roller plucks the tassel from the plant. After the machines go through, migrant workers are hired to go through the field and physically check each plant to make sure the tassel is gone.  Because the Sawyer Seed Farm is displayed during harvest time the Male Row Chopper is not shown but you can learn more about this machine at www.paulsmachine.com.

In September there is a four week window to pick, dry, shell and store 3,000 acres of seed corn. This aspect of the seed corn process is represented on Tim Grube’s display of Sawyer Seed farms.  Before the harvesting starts each picker is serviced in the shop to ensure the pickers have limited down time and do not damage the crop. 

Sawyer Seed Farm Shop

Sawyer Seed Farms own six harvesters. There are Four Super Jack Pixalls and two New Idea Uni-Pickers. Sawyer’s also hire TTS Harvesting Solutions to help with the harvest that and they use Byron Harvesters. Sweet corn pickers are used to harvest the seed corn because they pick corn at a much faster rate and harvest the ears of corn with little damage. The corn ears are harvested with the husks intact. The ear corn is hauled to a processing building where the cobs are sorted and husked. The husked cobs are hauled by a live bottom potato truck to the drying shed.

Seed Corn Harvesting with a Pixall Big Jack

Pixall Big Jack With 10 Row Corn Head

New Idea Uni-Harvester

Byron 8400 Harvester

Byron Dump Cart Used To Chase The Harvesters

Hauling The Ear Corn Out Of The Field

At the drying shed large piles of cob corn are dried by warm turbulent air that is forced underneath the piles. Drying the seed on the cob speeds up the process while ensuring that the kernels are not damaged. Once the drying stage is completed, the cobs are transferred back to the processing building. The cobs are re-sorted and shelled at the processing building. The shelled corn is taken to one of the Sawyer’s storage bins. Each bin represents a different variety of corn. When the variety is needed, it is emptied from the bin and treated with chemicals and bagged. The bagged corn is stored at the corporate office on the Eberle farm and trucked out to customers.

Processing Cobs From The Field

Corn Husks From Processed Ear Corn 

Cleaned Ear Corn Is Trucked To The Dryer

Ear Corn In The Dryer

Seed Bins

Sawyer Seed Warehouse

Tim started building the seed corn display in August 2003. It was a major undertaking. Before the building started Tim Grube and John Schomburg visited Kaltenberg Seeds to learn about the seed corn process described in this article. Touring a real Wisconsin Seed corn farm helped Tim and John build an accurate and detailed display. Visiting a farm and modeling your display after it allows you to create a great story to go along with your work .   To learn more about Kaltenberg Seeds visit their website at www.kaltenbergseeds.com. 

The Toy Tractor Times would like to congratulate Tim Grube on his display contest wins and thank him for taking the time to share his work with fellow collectors at toy shows.

Tim Grube with contest organizer Danny Angotti