Farm Progress

Slideshow: See this shop when the Indiana Farm Management Tour visits Danny Gill’s farm on June 21.

Tom J Bechman 1, Editor, Indiana Prairie Farmer

May 9, 2018

8 Slides

Many people build a farm shop so they’ll have somewhere comfortable to work all year long. If that’s your goal, check out Danny Gill’s farm shop near Franklin, Ind. It will be open for inspection when Purdue University’s Indiana Farm Management Tour visits as the first stop on June 21.

“It’s a comfortable place to work,” Gill says. “It typically stays around 40 to 50 degrees F in here most of the year by itself.

“We have radiant heat running across the ceiling. If it is chilly in the winter, we kick it on for a while. We use a small window air conditioner when needed in the summer, but it stays comfortable — most of the time, anyway,” he says.

Related: New report offers farm shop insight

The secret is not what you can see when you walk through the shop, but what you can’t see. There is blown-in insulation in the ceiling and 6-inch-thick batts of insulation tucked into the walls. The 60-by-64-foot shop was built several years ago and is part of a larger building that includes machinery storage on the north end.

A long drain on one side of the building makes it easy to sweep water off and keep the floor clean and dry. The structure is also equipped with air outlets at a couple of locations, plus one inside the machinery storage section of the building.

Most of the time, several restored John Deere tractors — primarily late-model two-cylinder tractors and the New Generation models that followed — sit on one side of the shop. Gill has restored numerous John Deere tractors over the years. He has a paint room in another building where he does painting.

Check out the slideshow for photos of the shop.

About the Author(s)

Tom J Bechman 1

Editor, Indiana Prairie Farmer

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