An early 20th century International Harvester Hay Press has found a new home next to the old Dolores Star office on Highway 145. The classic machine is part of Truelsen\u2019s historical farm and mining equipment collection, and was too good to just be stored away on his ranch up the river.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bought it for $125 from a scrapyard in Ignacio 20 years ago. I knew I had to have one of these,\u201d Truelsen says. \u201cIt\u2019s one of my best pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
The large contraption is rusty but was hardly used, he said. It probably fell victim to more modern bailers in the 1930s that had a pick-up reel to scoop hay from the windrow instead of having to load hay by hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will still run if I put a motor and a belt on it. The bearings and gears are in perfect working order,\u201d Val says with pride. \u201cIt\u2019s getting a lot of comments at the restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n
The baler was one of the original portable presses on wheels. Designed to be pulled by a horse or tractor, the hay would be top loaded by hand into a hopper. Then a crankshaft connected to a series of gears and levers move the \u201chorse head\u201d an arm that compresses hay into a bale that is passed through a chute, eventually ringing a bell. Workers then attached wires to the bale, and it drops off the end.<\/p>\n
Stop-and-look historical artifacts attract tourism, and have a type of retro artistic appeal that makes a town more interesting. Val has plans to mount an old engine on the press, and put up an informational sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the idea, to give people a reason to slow down and pull over in our town,\u201d he said. \u201cThen down the road, they can stop again and check out the Galloping Goose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
early 20th century International Harvester Hay Press has found a new home next to the old Dolores Star office on Highway 145. The classic machine is part of Truelsen\u2019s historical farm and mining equipment collection, and was too good to just be stored away on his ranch up the river. \u201cI bought it for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[281,188,13,450,421],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-122948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-agriculture","tag-dolores-star","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-restaurant-and-catering","tag-tourism-and-leisure"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122948"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=122948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}