Farm machinery has its own type of artwork. This inner circle of the Case Steam Tractor rear wheel makes an interesting pattern. But it isn’t a wheel that you would want to run over your foot as the wheel is five and a half feet in diameter and two feet wide and the steam tractor empty weight is 24,000 pounds. You can see the full wheel on Monday’s picture.
Red Rear Wheel
In 1947, Willys-Overland Motors debuted its Willys Jeep truck that served up everything that a farmer or laborer could want without much else. Buyers could have their truck with a pickup bed or a stake bed, or they could even take home a bare chassis if they liked depending on their needs.
Willys Jeep Truck
The steam tractor was used in rural North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to aid in threshing, in which the owner/operator of a threshing machine or threshing rig would travel from farmstead to farmstead threshing grain. Oats were a common item to be threshed, but wheat and other grains were common as well.
Steam traction engines were often too expensive for a single farmer to purchase, so “threshing rings” were often formed. In a threshing ring, multiple farmers pooled their resources to purchase a steam engine. They also chose one person among them to go to a steam school, to learn how to run the engine properly. There were also threshing contractors, who owned their own engine and thresher, and went to different farms, hiring themselves out to thresh grain.
The steam tractor ran the belts that would turn other equipment like the threshing machine. The big boiler on wheels had water which was heated into steam in a boiler until it reaches a high pressure. When expanded through pistons or turbines, mechanical work is done. The reduced-pressure steam is then condensed and pumped back into the boiler. And on this Case engine, the piston turns the large wheel which turns the belt used to power other equipment.
Case Steam Tractor
Watching the clouds go by on a warm, lazy, summer afternoon.
Lazy Summer Day
The center of the black-eyed susan is soaking up the sun and later this fall, hundreds of seeds will land on the ground and some will take root for more yellow beauty next year.
Black-eyed Susan
The evening waning light, summer crickets chirping, the rustling of leaves and grass swaying in the breeze.
Swaying Grass
The lilies are dancing in the summertime sunshine and adding bright colors against the green backdrop.
Dancing Lily
One often thinks of a cardinal as a winter bird as its red colors stand out against the white snow since they do not molt into a dull winter plumage but they are rather striking in the summer time too. In summer, their sweet whistles are one of the first sounds of the morning.
Only a few female North American songbirds sing, but the female Northern Cardinal does, and often while sitting on the nest. This may give the male information about when to bring food to the nest. A mated pair shares song phrases, but the female may sing a longer and slightly more complex song than the male.
Northern Cardinal
Some road ditches and fields are displaying yellow flowers which are attracting a lot of bees. Birdsfoot Trefoil is a plant used in agriculture as a forage plant for pasture, hay and silage and used as an alternative to alfalfa in poor soils. It has become an invasive species in some regions of North America.
The flowers develop into small pea-like pods or legumes. The name ‘bird’s foot’ refers to the appearance of the seed pods on their stalk. There are five leaflets, but with the central three held conspicuously above the others, hence the use of the name trefoil.
Birdsfoot Trefoil
This fourteen sided barn, built 105 years ago, looks in fairly good shape. It has a two pitch roof and a nice looking rock foundation.
Fourteen Sided Barn
