A Rusting Relic- Hillside Combine

_DSC6140_39 tonemapped topaz nx 72dpi, originally uploaded by Donnie Fulks.

Found on my trip to the Palouse region a year ago June. One of the items on my long wish list for the trip with Tony Sweet and crew was old farm equipment. I'm a farmer and dad was a farm equipment dealer so the subject is naturally of great interest to me. On this day, we had left the hotel before sunrise knowing the weather was questionable. Sure enough the Butte was enshrouded in low clouds and the group headed back to the hotel. I took the opportunity to hunt for rusty farm equipment and found this. This old machine, probably from the 40's, was in a fenced cattle pasture so my angles were limited. The Palouse region is known for it's steep hills and this is an early hillside combine. It is made so that it can tilt side to side to keep the threshing and separating as level as possible. Otherwise the efficiency of the machine would decline greatly. It also appears that this combine lacks a grain tank for the harvested wheat to be collected. Instead I believe the wheat was bagged as via the "Y" shaped shoot at the end of the elevator/auger assembly. An incredibly dusty job to work on this machine. Some research indicated this is possibly a Deering make. Deering was a brand of McCormick-Deering, the forerunner to International farm equipment, and was dropped in 1948 or '49. Today's combines cost $350,000 and sport a climate controlled cab. HDR with Photomatix, 70-200 lens.