| Disking | Planting | Spraying & Fertilizing | Harvesting | Hauling & Storing Grain |
Click on each picture to see a photo gallery of the implements described.
The disk is a farm implement with large circular blades that have sharp edges and dig into the ground. These blades are about twenty inches in diameter. The disk mulches up the soil to make it mellow and easy to plant. This 32 feet wide disk is pulled behind a tractor.
 | Planting is done with an implement commonly called a "planter." The planter comes in 4,8,12,and 16 rows. The rows are mechanisms that consist of two wheels, a seed dropping piece, and a fertilizer tube. On top of these mechanisms there is a seed box that holds seed and graphite, a kind of powder lubricant to help the seed go through easily. |
| In front of the planting mechanisms there are two disks that dig a ridge in the soil just deep enough to plant the seed. |
| After the ridge is dug, each planting mechanism drops one seed at a time into the ridge. You have to set the depth and space between each seed according to the weather, soil, and seed. Then the fertilizer tube releases a few drops of fertilizer which is held in 70 gallon tanks in front of the whole planter. There are four tanks all together. |
| The two packer wheels on each side of the planting mechanism then pack the soil back over the ridge. The whole planting process takes only a few seconds per seed and happens continually until the end of the field. This implement is also pulled behind a tractor. |
| The drill is used to plant wheat. They have huge tanks, one for fertilizer and one for wheat seed. Semis deliver these to products to the drill in the field when they are needed. The rear piece of equipment of the drill is the planting part. It uses air to push the seed from the big tanks to a very simple planting mechanism witch is a which is the same as on the planter. |
| Most farmers in Lyman County plant sunflowers, wheat, corn, and milo. Others like to plant cane, soybeans, and millet, and a few farmers with irrigation equipment, plant popcorn and potatoes. |
Step 3:
Spraying
and Dry Fertilizing 
There are two ways to spray a field: aerial spraying and ground spraying
| In aerial spraying, the chemicals are dropped from an airplane. These planes are very small and only hold one person and chemicals. |
| Ground spraying is done with a tractor pulling a sprayer, or with a self-propelled sprayer. These machines have nozzles on booms which stick out from the main part of the sprayer. These nozzles spray out mixed chemicals from a huge tank on the main frame of the sprayer. |
Farmers do not always spray every field. The chemicals are very expensive, and weeds, pests, and fungus are not always in the crop.
| To enhance the productivity of the crop, farmers often put dry fertilizer on their fields. They call it "dry fertilizer" because it is in the form of tiny pieces that dissolve into the soil when rained on. Dry fertilizing can only be done when the crop has not yet appeared above ground. |
The process is done with a fertilizer tank on a trailer that is pulled behind a tractor. A spreader then throws the product out over a large range of ground.
| A combine is an implement that cuts and harvests the grain. A combine does this by first, cutting the whole plant off about six inches above the ground. Secondly, it feeds those plants into a mechanism that shakes the stalk until the seed comes apart from each plant. The seed then drops down through holes in the machine. It is collected there and travels to the grain tank by an auger. |
| The left over parts of the plant keep traveling to the back of the combine where they get spread out on the ground. This process continues as long as the combine is cutting the crop. |
| Farmers often go back and bale up the left over stalks of wheat. These bales of straw are put on the ground to keep the livestock warm during cold weather. |
Step 5:
Hauling
and Storing Grain
The grain that is harvested has to be unloaded from the combine by a large attached auger. A grain cart has to pull up alongside the auger. Both the combine and the grain cart must maintain the exact same speed while unloading.
