Farm Truck

Another bin, another harvester

Still Life with Massey Ferguson

Wildorado, Texas

If you're interested in the history of 20th century grain storage (and who isn't?),
Wildorado, Texas is an interesting little town.

Trees

The house is still there, but not the trees.

Thu, Mar 15, 1917 – Page 1 · The Tucumcari News and Tucumcari Times (Tucumcari, New Mexico) · Newspapers.com

Chief of the Pastores Casimiro Romero

Just northeast of the New Mexico line on U.S. 54

 "Moved to Texas, 1876, from New Mexico-- wife and two children in a coach, goods in 14 wagons. Owned 6,000 sheep. A Castilian Spaniard by birth, Romero spoke for pastores (sheep herders), who built eleven haciendas and plazas in Canadian River area. Cattle rancher Chas. Goodnight in late 1876 made a pact with Romero to respect right of the pastores to valley of Canadian River. But, railroads and cattle ranches in 1880s cut into sheep lands. Romero returned to New Mexico, selling Texas lands, 1897. He is memorialized in this area by town of Romero (3.5 miles southwest of here)." Romero spent his last years ranching sheep on a couple of quarter sections near Bard, New Mexico. He is buried in an unmarked grave in the Endee Cemetery.

Gail Borden

 

(Wikipedia) Gail Borden Jr. (November 9, 1801 – January 11, 1874) was a native New Yorker who settled in Texas in 1829, where he worked as a land surveyor, newspaper publisher, and inventor.
He created a process in 1853 to make sweetened condensed milk. Earlier Borden helped plan the cities of Houston and Galveston in 1836.
… Probably of equal importance for the future of milk production were Borden's requirements (the "Dairyman's Ten Commandments") for farmers who wanted to sell him raw milk: they were required to wash the cows' udders before milking, keep barns swept clean, and scald and dry their strainers morning and night. By 1858, Borden's milk, sold as Eagle Brand, had gained a reputation for purity, durability and economy.
 Continued

Hard Times for a Hot Commodity, the Prized New Mexico Chile

 

(NYTimes) HATCH, N.M. - In all her eight decades of farming in southeastern New Mexico, June Rutherford has never seen a chile season this bad.

“The weather hasn’t been a bit good for chile,” said Ms. Rutherford, who was recently crowned Queen of the Great New Mexico Chile Taste-Off, in Socorro, N.M., about 110 miles north of Hatch.

At 95, Ms. Rutherford is the matriarch of the Franzoy family, one of the first to commercialize the Hatch chile, a mainstay of the farm-based economy here and a brand known around the world. Continued

Barn? Mill? Gin?

Somewhere between Black Tower and Grier, New Mexico

Golden West Flour Mill in Clovis Burns Down

It's gone

Rust and Grain

Wildorado, Texas

Screwmen, Spidermen, and Cotton’s Gilded-Age Gargantua

(History Bandits) … With the invention of the compress, continued railroad expansion, and the advent of electrical telegraphic communication, the cotton industry moved away from formerly monopolistic coastal cities, such as Houston, Galveston, and New Orleans, and moved inland to larger markets, now accessible by rail and interior water sources, such as St. Louis, Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City, and Dallas.
Following the Civil War, farmers flocked to the frontier regions of Texas, which led all states in cotton production by 1889. By 1990, Texas gins accounted for thirty-four percent of the nation’s production. Continued

The Black Sunday Dust Storm of 1935

"Dust storm. It was conditions of this sort which forced many
 farmers to abandon the area. Spring 1935. New Mexico" - Dorothea Lange

(Wikipedia) Black Sunday refers to a particularly severe dust storm that occurred on April 14, 1935, as part of the Dust Bowl. It was one of the worst dust storms in American history and it caused immense economic and agricultural damage.

It is estimated to have displaced 300 million tons of topsoil from the prairie area in the US. On the afternoon of April 14, the residents of the Plains States were forced to take cover as a dust storm, or "black blizzard", blew through the region.

The storm hit the Oklahoma Panhandle and Northwestern Oklahoma first, and moved south for the remainder of the day. It hit Beaver around 4:00 p.m., Boise City around 5:15 p.m., and Amarillo, Texas, at 7:20 p.m.

The conditions were the most severe in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, but the storm's effects were felt in other surrounding areas. Continued

The First Arbor Day

(Library of Congress) The first official Arbor Day took place on April 10th, 1872. It is estimated that on this inaugural Arbor Day, Nebraskans celebrated by planting more than one million trees.
The occasion fulfilled the dream of J. Sterling Morton, a newspaper editor and former governor of the Nebraska Territory. Morton, an ardent proponent of forestation, lobbied for a holiday to encourage the planting of trees.
According to the National Arbor Day Foundation, counties and individuals that planted the most trees were awarded prizes. Continued

Vintage Gleaner Combine Harvester

  

The above harvester dates from (I'm guessing), the 1960's. By that time, combine harvesters had been around, in one form or another, for over a hundred years. The one below, I don't know who made it, dates from the turn of the twentieth century, and was probably pulled by mules. Both were impressive works of engineering.

 

 

Harvester in action, c1912 (Wikipedia)



Signage: P.G.C. CO-OP Feed

Wildorado, Texas (Sixgun Siding)

(Special Collections Library, Texas Tech) The Producers Grain Corporation (PGC) was a regional grain marketing cooperative headquartered in Amarillo, Texas.
It was organized by twenty-nine country elevators in April 1938. It opened international trade markets for the Great Plains sorghum production primarily to Japan (Zen Koren) and Mexico (Conasupo) during the 1950's and 1960's.
PGC collected grain from Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, and New Mexico.
It had corporate operations in Lubbock, Fort Worth, Plainview, Corpus Christi, Texas and Colton, California.
Feed mill operations beginning in 1945 served the ranchers and farmers of West Texas, western Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.
The company celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1988. After financial difficulties in the early 1980's, PGC sold to Agri Industries. Link

Just how many old tractor pictures does one blog need?

I think we all know the answer to that one.

Wildorado Grain Elevator 1

Wildorado, Texas

Tankhouse and Barn

I've posted this scene before, but I like this angle better, though you lose the truck.
Either way, it's in Roosevelt County, New Mexico.

Your squash are overdue: New Mexico's seed library collections

(Library of Congress)

(Santa Fe New Mexican) … Brita Sauer, the woman who managed Albuquerque library’s seed library, is now library services director at the main branch of Santa Fe Public Library, with plans already in the works to replicate the successful Duke City program.
“I think that Santa Fe is a great community for this,” Sauer said. “It’s a great resource and a great way for people to come together around seeds and plants. It’s also a positive thing for libraries to tap into that community spirit that brings people together a little more.” Continued