From The Archives: Combine-Mounted Planter

From The Archives: Combine-Mounted Planter COMBINES Modifications 23-4-25 No farm writer in the country has written more stories about "made it myself" ideas born in farm workshops that C.F. Marley of Nokomis, Ill. He's been making the rounds to innovative farm shops for nearly 50 years and he's produced so much work for all the national farm magazines, that his story archives are now on file at the University of Illinois. (To see them, contact the University Archives at Urbana, Ill., at 217-333-0798.) Recently, C.F. was going through stories ready to go into the archives when he spotted these photos of an Illinois farmer who mounted a planter on his combine. Here's what he remembers about it. "Owen Hilvety of Moweaqua, Ill., was an innovative farmer who was always coming up with a faster, better way to handle farm jobs. He died a few years ago but some of his ideas would still make good stories today," says Marley. "In the early 1970's, he told me he had come up with a way to plant soybeans as he harvested small grains. He wanted to double crop beans. The combine-mounted planter let him avoid the need to make a separate trip through the field with a planter," says Marley. "He mounted four White planter units on a toolbar that ran under the back of his International combine. The seed boxes mounted up by the grain tank. He used individual air-powered units - one per row - to pull seed out and blow it to the row units. A seed monitor mounted up by the cab. A hydraulic lever at the back of the combine raised and lowered the toolbar as needed."

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