My Great Grandfather Joe was always busy coming up with new and better ways to farm, just as my Grandpa is bringing you whole grains direct from the farm. Here's an article that was printed in the Whitman County Gazette in the 1960s.
Automation, ingenuity solved Myers' transportation problem
Keeping the grain moving during harvest on the Price-Fitzsimmons ranch north of Colfax - leased by Joe Myers - wasn't too much of a problem this year after the installation of a bit of automation and the use of Myers' two sons in loading and driving trucks from the fields. At left is a field truck unloading the big 4,000-bushel tank, and at right is a transport truck which took the grain to a Columbia river port. A bit of "automation" and ingenuity simplified the harvest transportation problem for Joe Myers on the Price-Fitzsimmons ranch in the Hubbard district this year...and received the enthusiatic endorsement of Myers' two sub-teen age sons.
Myers installed a grain tank of about 4,000 bushels capacity in the farmyard to which all grain is hauled from the field. The field trucks are dumped into a small pit and augered to the top of the tank.
The large over-the-road trucks and trailers are loaded by the driver, who operates a push button control, which turns on an automatic time clock at the same time it starts the loading auger. The clock turns off the auger after a certain length of time, assuring uniform loads for each transport and keeping a running log of all loads and times of loading.
Myers' two sons, Glenn, 11, and Bill, 12, have taken over the complete farm hauling operations with Glenn loading the trucks and Bill hauling and unloading them. Wayne Robertson, who runs the combine, has radio communication with the truck loader, simplifying the operation.
"The boys became such ardent harvesters you couldn't pry them away from the job," Myers said. "I could really stir up a big fuss by just threatening to bring one to town. The boys had no breakdowns and haven't as much as scratched a truck."
The Myers boys, who have lived in Colfax for the last several years, decided the country life was the thing for them during harvest and took their bedding to the bunkhouse on the farm and made their home there during harvest.
The displaced truck driver Virgil Delegans, has turned to other farm work and plowed about 500 acres before harvest ended, cutting down on Fall work when time is at a premium, Myers said. The grain haul to "market" was done under contract by John Rea of Touchet, who hauled Myers' grain to the Port of Walla Walla at Wallula where it was turned over to Western Farmers, who bought it on contract last spring.
