I Bought A Corn Planter!

I recently won an old John Deere 2-row planter from an auction. It's pretty rusty but seems complete and appears to operate-ish. I am planning to work on it over the winter/spring and have it ready to go planting corn, soybeans and maybe even sunflowers later in the spring. My hope is that with the planter, I can keep the turkeys and other woodland critters from eating all of my seed almost immediately after I plant it. I can hope, right?

I've been looking for a planter for a while. They come up in farm auctions quite a bit but they seem to go for a lot more money than what I want to pay for one. The planter I won came up well after planting season and went at a cost that I was a little more comfortable with. I didn't get it cheap, but I don't think it was over inflated either. After picking it up, I found out that it has just about every option you could put on a planter back in the day. It has the cable system for the check row planting, it has fertilizer hoppers (which have some rust holes) and it even has the pesticide dispensing hopper. Even better, all of the accessories still appear to be able to be functional. However, I will not be using them and I will actually be removing them to save on weight and complexity. The roll of wire for the check rows must weigh in at a couple hundred pounds! I will need to remove some of the accessories before I can get it into the garage. Then, there comes the issue of getting it off the trailer.

When I picked it up, it was nicely packaged on a large homemade pallet. Since I don't have a bucket on my tractor and the girls won't let me get a skidsteer, I am not sure how I am going to lift it off. I do know it will be sketchy and probably not OSHA approved. Once it's off, I will do some cleanup and repainting to make it look a little prettier. That will also let me make sure things are in working condition and allow me to make any repairs I might need. There aren't many parts available for this model anymore, so I may have to fabricate new or recondition the old parts. It will be an experience for sure. Stay tuned to see the progress updates. They will be slow for a while as I am currently still trying to clean out space in the garage for it, but once I get going, the updates should come fast and often.