-Farm News photo by Lori Berglund
Demolition crews are making quick work of taking down this old wood grain storage facility at United Co-op in Stratford. With one wall peeled away, it’s easy to see the honeycomb-like structure inside where individual bins held grain.

STRATFORD — The team from Lee Farm Excavating, of Paxton, Illinois., was making it look easy in early March when it began taking down two old woodhouse grain storage facilities at the United Co-op site in Stratford.

“It’s actually pretty stressful,” said Cody Kohlmeyer, who was operating one of two big Caterpillars that were picking away at the first of the two aging structures.

Kohlmeyer, originally from Missouri, said he has been operating such equipment for a decade now. The job appeared to be moving quickly, but Kohlmeyer said that with related concrete work, they would likely be in town some three weeks to completely finish the job.

United Co-op is taking down the two woodhouses, which date to the 1950s and 1960s, in order to increase grain storage capacity, and speed the process of grain dumping for area farmers at harvest time. Once the area is cleared, work will begin quickly this spring on two, 500,0000-bushel, steel bins, one for soybeans and one for dry corn.

The project is slated to be done and ready to welcome farmers this fall, or even before as they empty on-farm storage prior to harvest. It will bring total storage capacity in Stratford to a little over 2 million bushels of grain.

Demolition work was drawing a few onlookers, many of them farmers who have hauled to the facility for decades.

Faded tin siding was stripped away March 11 to start the demolition project. As the Cat opened up the first of the two woodhouses, onlookers could see the honeycomb of individual bins that were the hallmark of wood grain storage in mid-century American agriculture.

“They were a great thing in their day,” said Doran Stakey, location manager for United Co-op at Stratford.

Grain could be tracked as to which bin of the woodhouse it was piped to upon delivery. Likewise, grain could be blended among the individual bins. There were even sections, in the early days, for different grains. At one time, corn, soybeans, and even oats, could have been stored in different sections within one woodhouse. The wood walls could even absorb some excess moisture from the grain.

In more recent years, only corn or soybeans were stored in each individual woodhouse. While Stakey can appreciate the history behind these woodhouses that have served area farmers for over half a century, he’s also looking forward to providing better service for today’s members of United Co-op.

While the old woodhouses held roughly 100,000 bushels each, each of the new steel bins will hold a half million bushels. With such vastly increased capacity also comes a need to move that grain faster as farmers bring it in from the fields in the fall.

The total project includes a new receiving pit for soybeans and a new 20,000 bushels per hour grain leg. The new leg will replace one that moved grain at a speed of just 3,000 bushels per hour. An existing 10,000 bushels per hour grain leg will remain in service, ratcheting up the ability to move grain quickly.

“That’s going to make it so nice,” Stakey said. “Anytime we can move things more quickly here, that’s a big benefit to farmers.”

A new and larger scale, as well as a brand new office, were completed last fall in the first phase of the renovation project at Stratford.

The original demolition plan called for the first woodhouse to be burned. However, that plan had to be scrapped because insurance regulations found that burning would not be allowed from January through March, due to the ice build-up that is typical in most winters, according to Nick Willwerth of United Co-op. While this winter has been unseasonably warm, the regulations nonetheless disallowed burning and the decision was made to use the big equipment to take down both structures.

With recent Red Flag warnings, and a new burn ban in place in adjoining Webster County, the physical demolition may have proved to be a wise decision.

The Stratford location has been a member of United Co-op since 1994. Formed in 1977, United Co-op was created when the boards of individual co-ops in Webster City, Highview, Flugstad, Stonega, and Kamrar voted to form the new organization.