Using YouTube

This summer, I had the oppotunity to travel to Delaware to meet with some employees and customers of GROWMARK FS, LLC (GFS). It was an interesting trip for me as I'd never been to that part of the country before, and I learned quite a bit about their business.

While there, I watched a field of peas being planted and fertilized. That's not a crop we grow on a large scale in Illinois, but vegetable crops are big business in the GFS territory. Seeing the different equipment used and comparing the sandy soil to what I'm used to was a learning experience.

I also met Rick Lee, TURF SERVICES sales representative, who works primarily with golf courses. He and his team have developed a process to apply nutrients without damaging fragile grasses or violating strict environmental regulations due to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean and its numerous bays. You may recall the story about the specialized truck SHOPWORKS built in the July/August 2008 issue of the Spirit.

Lee is also embracing social media by creating YouTube videos of various GFS products and services to use as marketing tools. He believes that "a picture paints a thousand words, but an edited video tells the whole story" and has received positive feedback from current and potential customers alike. Follow the links below to see some of his videos currently available on YouTube.

www.youtube.com/agronomicservice

www.youtube.com/growmarkfsturf

Wabash Valley Provides Hydraulic Oil for 45-foot Press

This article was written by Tom Stahl, precision farming coordinator at Wabash Valley Service Company in Grayville, Ill. It first appeared in their company newsletter.

Several men are scurrying about as they load and secure a new 2,000 ton press, in pieces, on seven to eight trucks, for the trip from Pacific Press Technologies in Mt. Carmel, Ill. to Lexington, Ky. This one is custom designed to form large steel tubes for very large cranes to be built in Lexington. Pacific designs, fabricates, and assembles presses on site. It inspects them and then disassembles them for shipping. When the new press arrives at Lexington, a team of Pacific employees will reassemble it and ready it for operation. For the purchaser it is a turnkey job. At 45 feet long, it is the largest (in physical size) press that Pacific has ever built. They have built presses with higher capacities, up to 3,000 tons, but never one this long.

Purchasing Manager Mary Switzer said, “Everything is fabricated on site from blocks of steel and custom castings, which we order from a foundry. From start to finish, including engineering design, the project took most of a year to complete.

“The press we are shipping today will go out on four semi trucks which are oversize loads and three to four trucks with normal loads. The whole press weighs approximately 800,000 pounds,” she said. Everything that Pacific Press makes is custom designed.

The press has two hydraulic cylinders, each of which has a 36 inch diameter and an 18 inch stroke. They weigh 2,100 pounds each. The throat height of this press is 56 inches. It holds 800 gallons of hydraulic oil and this is where Wabash Valley Service Co. comes in. David Coles, Energy Management Specialist for Wabash Valley, has provided oil for Pacific since 2000 when a team from Wabash Valley and GROWMARK convinced them to switch from Shell products to FS. Wabash had been selling them Shell but thought that FS Industrial Oils would serve them better. After Petroleum Manager Roger Winter made the initial approach on switching brands, he teamed up with Coles, Craig Stout, (Lubricant Products Manager for GROWMARK), and Mike Boles, who was then the Industrial Oil Salesman for the GROWMARK Southern Region. They convinced Switzer that FS Industrial Oils were a better choice and Pacific has used FS products ever since.

Coles delivers over 6,000 gallons of oil to Pacific Press annually. Winter said, “Dealing with Pacific Press and Mary Switzer has been a delightful experience.”

A Visit to the Windy (and Cold, and Snowy) City

Last week I had the opportunity to spend several days in Chicago. The main reason for the trip was to attend the Illinois Farm Bureau Annual Meeting, which I did on Saturday and Sunday. I served as a judge in one round of the discussion meet contest on Saturday, then sat in on the Young Leader awards presentation Sunday morning. I was impressed by the talent these young people possess - the future of agriculture is bright!

On Thursday I attended a day-long class on social media. You may have heard that term used different places. Social media -- also known as new media -- uses the Internet to express and share ideas and information, through outlets like YouTube, Facebook, or even the blog you're reading right now. It was a very interesting and informative class that only scratched the surface in our allotted time. I'm excited about the potential and have several ideas of ways we can use some of these new tools in the GROWMARK System.

But the highlight of the trip for me was a visit to a special class of 4th graders. My husband and I have participated for the last four years in the Illinois Agriculture in the Classroom's Adopt-a-Classroom program. The concept is simple: teachers in Chicago sign up at the beginning of the school year and are matched with a farm family. They exchange letters, pictures, and other items and learn about where their food, fiber, and fuel come from. Personal visits are encouraged, but not required, but for the first time I was able to meet our class in person. It was so much fun to talk to the students and their teacher and answer their questions about farming. I hope they learned a little more about the importance of agriculture and will remember some of the things we are sharing through our letters as they get older.