Just inside the the 40-foot-wide fold-up door on Shawn Gefferts machine shed if you can call a building large enough to hold a basketball court a shed sits a tiny John Deere riding toy, the apple of son Wades eye.
Nearby, poised for dispatch as soon as ground dries, is a tractor sporting wide, hard-rubber tracks rather than wheels and tires. The machine, a John Deere 9520RX, is large enough easily to run over and crush a small pickup truck. More importantly, it is capable of cruising through a field of corn stubble drawing a 40-foot disk at 10 miles an hour.
Wade, who turned 18 months this week, is years from making the decision, but if he follows the Geffert pedigree and becomes a farmer, he may never step foot in a tractor, but instead oversee field work and harvesting by way of a computer terminal.
If he becomes a lawyer or doctor, or whatever, well probably have reached the point by the time hes as old as I am (35) that he can sit at a desk somewhere and farm at the touch of a terminal screen.
Thats not science fiction. Some farming operations now are done robotically and much of what occurs, even with a person in the cab of a tractor or combine, is dictated by Global Positioning System programming.
Fertilizer is put down according to analysis of soil samples, with application frequently changing at the behest of GPS directions as equipment is towed through fields. Computers in comfields. Computers in combines keep headers at the right pitch and height as crops are harvested, lifting, lowering or tilting the pick-up edge to follow the lands contour.
Wasnt always that way.
WHEN THE Geffert family dug deeply into fertile glacial till around Marysville in northern Kansas well over a century ago, stout mules and large horses towed equipment small enough to store in a small building.
No better way was available. Shawn remembers his grandfather telling about the nuisance of mules that, while cultivating young corn, felt obligated to have a snack now and again, hee-hawing as they bent to rip a new plant from the ground.
Slowly tractors, some as large as todays but cumbersome with steel wheels and weighing so much they compacted soil about as much as they prepped seedbeds, took hold.
In the halcyon days after World War II technological advances came with a rush.
Granddad bought that tractor (a scamp of a Ford thatd do well to pull an eight-foot disk) when he got home from the war, Shawn said, pointing to the midget attached to a small wagon. Wade likes that tractor best of course he would, its closer to his size.
The 1950 Ford and a 1955 Oliver Super 88 that Shawn rebuilt are in stark contrast to other equipment sitting in the shed.
The Gefferts came to Allen County in 1918, exactly a century ago, and set to work on land their father bought with the idea of them being successful where farm ground was cheaper than that in northern Kansas. They farmed, somewhat as Shawn does today, but also took advantage of every opportunity to make ends meet.
He told how theyd buy bull calves in Colorado. Shipped home by rail they were fattened as steers on lush pasture grass that sprang up each spring, mostly within easy view of the Neosho River. When time came to sell, theyd transport cattle to stockyards in Kansas City and spend part of their income on new Oliver tractors.
They had an Oliver dealership here, Shawn said. Theyd use the tractors a while and then sell them to neighbors at a discount. They also sold seed.
