My dad, Andrew Schommer, moved to North Dakota in 1921 on the present farmstead near Munich. I farmed alongside him until retirement then with my brother Robert until his retirement and now with Craig, our son.
Farming has really changed and the different crops [grown in this area have] changed as well. Wheat, barley, flax, peas, faba beans, soybeans, sunflowers, pinto beans, corn and canola can all be raised in this area, and we raised them all except pinto beans, as the market dictated.
Sixty years of memories and change
Some of the biggest changes through the years has been in the machinery we use these days. Starting with the grain drill, it was a 14’ press drill behind a John Deere A tractor.
We filled the drill with a bucket, then in the early 1960s started using fertilizer that came in 50 or 80 lb. bags. Then in the 1970s bulk fertilizer came about. Now most of the seeding is done with air seeders which was in the late 70s. That was a big change going from 14’ to up to 64’ today.
My first sprayer was a Melroe, no cab or markers and 50 foot booms. The only chemical was 2-4-D. Today there are so many its hard to keep up with them all. The new sprayers have up to 120’ booms – section control to avoid overlap and new technology to be able to spray just the weeds.
Harvest has some of the biggest changes in farming. I only remember one year of the threshing machine and binder. My first combine to run was a John Deere 55, no cab, so the dust and cold made for a long day. Some days I wore overshoes – 2 pairs of pants – coat – goggles – winter cap and a handkerchief over my mouth.
The size of the machines now are one of the biggest changes and going from a threshing cylinder to a rotor and now twin rotors. Headers came from 20’ to – now up to 50’ along with flex headers.
The cabs on these machines have air, heat, radios, business band radios – control modules that set the machine and tells us what’s happening full time. Tractors on the farm are all sizes, shapes and colors.
Dad’s first tractor was a B John Deere which is still on the farm today. From the 2 cylinder 30 – 40 HP to 2 wheel drive to front wheel assist to 4 wheel drive to tracks to quad tracks, with up to 600 + HP. The A John Deere I mentioned earlier I still drive 25 to 35 miles in our antique tractor drive each summer.
Then there’s the plow. Everyone had a plow. My first years of plowing was with the B John Deere with a three-bottom plow with a spring loaded hitch so when you hit a rock, it would unhitch from the tractor and had to hook it up again and slowly slide over the rock. They would eventually come out with the spring loaded bottoms, which are still used today.
The chisel plow came along in the 1990s and took over the fall tillage practices in a lot of the area. The size of them vary all the way up to 64’.
The high speed disc is now taking over a lot of the field work as they can be operated at higher speeds.
At 81 [years old], I’ll help out with the tractors, semi trucks and keeping up the farmstead as long as I can.
James Schommer, Munich, ND
