Mountain farming

wish I had a camera.I work for a custom farmer from time to time. Since this a mountainous area,we often work on hill sides,mesa 'tops',as well as in the valleys.Yesterday I was land planeing a field up on the side of a mountain.They are going to plant a dryland,cold season grass so the winter moisture will sprout it.Drove the tractor(1466) and landplane several miles up from the hyway up a steep(in places) and narrow winding mountain road.Most of the way it was paved. The last field before the forest.The end of the road.This place is even above the highest irrigation canal.so it's considered dryland,even though it gets a small amount of early spring runoff.I could look down at the valleys below,the mountain ranges to the east and south. Vast,beautiful country.Kind of makes you glad you are alive.I get to go back again today.

You know what they say, no pictures, it didn?t happen! Must?ve all been in a dream you had.

Got to have pictures. Ron Mn

Went with friends a few years ago with ATVs for four days riding the Colorado trails, stayed in Lake city area. Beautiful scenery for sure!

I am working at the top of Pitkin Mesa,above the town of Paonia,Co.The mountains are the 'Raggeds'and The 'West Elks to the east,Black Mesa to the south.

Around here mountain farming means a moonshiner.

That would sure be nice country to work in as long as you didn't slide over a cliff.

Ya want a experience of a life time on working on or in the hills just mow gas line right of way . Back in 70 i bought a 310G Case dozer that had 3 Pt. and PTO and a 580 CK backhoe to get into the excavating biz. Like and new venture it wa slow going getting started . The Case dealer came to me and offered my partner and i a big job of mowing gas line for Tennaco . Four lines with a total of 94 miles each as we had the start on equipment needed the (dozer).He told us that he would lease us a 430 Case wheel tractor and let us use a I H 340 wheel tractor that had a side mount sickle bar two 7 foot Hd. Brush hog and a 6 footer . and that he would also help us haul everything down to the starting point . Well being young and DUMB and plum STUPID we saw dollar signs and we took it on . The first day the line boss came down to show us how to go . we made one round and we learned we needed to make some MOD.'s on the 310 we needed a little more weight on the ft. , just a little like a ton and on the 430 we needed to add a bunch like when we were done we had two and a half feet of ft. weights sticking out . we mowed hills so steep that dirt bikes could not go up them , we mowed hills that the dozer would slide down them with the track locked . Some days we were lucky to make a mile . some easy going and lots not so easy , vary hard on equipment lots of flat tires couple gear boxes on both brush hogs several sets of blades one PTo on the dozer and a set of steering brake bands and a exhaust pipe . Learned that not all electric fences had insulators and would knock you on your donkey , not once but three times.

tall kid talks about steep hill he had to do a local on for either gas or fiber line guy at the locate site told tall kid
when job was first done cat operater slide a d9 down the hill at the bottom was either the mississippi or galena river

Always wondered how the old dozers worked on rough ground with pto and bushhog

I ran a combine in two fields that sound like the one you were in only east of Ft Hall Idaho on reservation land. Went up miles of narrow winding path in 2nd range because the hydro couldn’t pull it in hi range. Went around a bend and a mamma moose took off into the trees with her calf.

Got to the field and had the ‘privilege’ of making the first round around the field where the end of the header was hanging over a 300’ sheer drop off. The second field was right up there but less eventful but got to watch a mama moose and her calf walk across the field. I don’t know what the elevation was, it was 5000 feet at the bottom of the mountain before we went up to the field but when I kicked in the separator the combine Engine about killed and poured out black smoke till the turbo spooled up. Quite an experience for an Iowa flatlander. Wish I could do it again sometime. I don’t know why they farm that 7 bpa wheat land but it was a neat experience.

Well ya don't get flat tires from thorn apples , but i can tell ya stay off hills when tye are muddy , tracks will fill with mud and act like skies and when on a really steep hill you will learn how fast one will come down the hill . Never run a dozer on ICE with standard track as here again they slide like on ice skates . To work on ice they make a special pad or you can make your own .

Red.........in 1958-9, I was TV Engr for KREY-TV ch-10 in Montrose. Got my feed from Rex Howell's KREX-TV ch-5 in Grand Junction. There was a "gap" at the end of Grand Mesa, that I gott off-the-air Video with special TV receiver. One Sunday, I gott wiped out with hydra-foil racing on Lake Washington; Seattle, Wash. Skip, they called it. In 1956, after church, we'd load a car fulla kids and go over 3-passes to Ouray, to swim in HOT-SPRINGS pool. There was some hole-inna-wall drugstore that sold the BEST hamburgers.......Durango Dell who knows how to pronounce Ouray (who was an Ute Indian Chief)

A Tenneco line (now Kinder-Morgan) passes through the farm and those mowing tractors look like they went through a battlefield. For years Tenneco did their own mowing so you would see David Brown's and Case 1490's out and about.

Tractor Vet, you better not take a job as a ski trail groomer operator. They groom slopes that you can't possibly walk on. To do the real steep ones though they use a winch cat. They take a normal slope to the top then hook a stout cable into massive dead man, then go down and up paying out and pulling in the cable.

I remember on a cross-country trip, somewhere along I-70 I think--there was a dam on the north side of the road. Night was falling and I could just make out a figure way high up on the steep grass earthen berm. He was cutting the grass with a walk-behind mower, maybe a gravely or similar. He looked like an ant painting the side of a skyscraper.

I heard once many years ago that 4-150 Whites were adapted to grooming trails. I am not sure how steep an incline they would go up.

20 years ago I replaced the engine in a Studebaker ‘weasel’, a small lightweight unarmored tracked vehicle made for ww2. It mainly went to Norway and Alaska for use in snow. A few were outfitted with flotation tanks to make them amphibious. Anyway, the Weasel could climb a steeper slope than the engine oil pan was designed for so the engine would starve for oil and spin a bearing. The engine I replaced had a spun bearing but I don’t know how it happened.

Before they had winch cats I took a scary
ride/slide down an icy ski slope in an old
Tucker snowcat. You know the articulated
ones with the steel tracks. I've also slid
down icy hillsides with bulldozers logging,
like someone mentioned below.

I am from fort hall reservation my summer range is
east of fort hall about 35 miles dry land farming
hasn?t been to great in Idaho when the rain stops in
the spring it soesnt start up until about time to
combine

(quoted from post at 17:19:29 12/20/17) I heard once many years ago that 4-150 Whites were adapted to grooming trails. I am not sure how steep an incline they would go up.

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Yes they were. Maybe ten years ago Oliver Hart Parr collectors had an article about them. They were in Vermont, perhaps at Pico Peak. They had super wide tires on them, so they would have gotten good traction but not as good as groomers now with, tracks four feet wide and twelve feet long.

(quoted from post at 14:40:57 12/20/17) Red.........in 1958-9, I was TV Engr for KREY-TV ch-10 in Montrose. Got my feed from Rex Howell's KREX-TV ch-5 in Grand Junction. There was a "gap" at the end of Grand Mesa, that I gott off-the-air Video with special TV receiver. One Sunday, I gott wiped out with hydra-foil racing on Lake Washington; Seattle, Wash. Skip, they called it. In 1956, after church, we'd load a car fulla kids and go over 3-passes to Ouray, to swim in HOT-SPRINGS pool. There was some hole-inna-wall drugstore that sold the BEST hamburgers.......Durango Dell who knows how to pronounce Ouray (who was an Ute Indian Chief)

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Hey Dell, I've been to Montrose 2-3 times. We flew in and maybe out of there on two trips that I made to Telluride.

My wife and kids and I went on vacation this spring to Denver, Ouray, Grand Canyon, and back through Grand Junction. Pretty country and I enjoyed every minute of it. We came home 3 months too early, but anyway, I tried to look you up on here before we left to meet for coffee but you weren't around much about that time. For a flatland wrote like me it is amazing how any of that ground is farmed.