John Deere 110 Garden Tractor Repaired, Repainted

Our tenant uses an antique John Deere 110 Garden Tractor to spray weeds around the farm. This is the same make and model as featured in the movie "The Straight Story." The tractor must be a valuable collectible by now. It required some repairs to its brake, its ignition switch, and its tie rods, so our tenant sent it to Ranchers Tractor Company in Merced to get the work done correctly. Upon getting it back, our tenant repainted it. It's good for another several years of serious farm work. See the results below.

That Time of Year Again

The cotton is ready for defoliation. The yields are a mystery to be solved in about a month. The weather is a great unknown, as are the future prices for Pima and upland cotton. All we can do is wait and hope.

GPS

Our tenant uses a neighbor's tractor equipped with a GPS steering control system for making furrows and planting cotton. This type of system costs over $30,000 and is not suitable for use on the old John Deere 4430 used for general tillage on our farm. Now guidance systems that give steering cues without actually taking over the tractor's steering are available for a small fraction of the cost of a full GPS steering control system. Our tenant is investigating these systems and will probably install one on the old 4430 for this fall's tillage season. If our tenant gets one of these, we'll have an update on it in the next farmland news.

Robert Sturgeon
Publisher, Editor, Reporter, Ace Photographer, Newsroom Flunky, Webmaster
rsturge@inreach.com
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