Harry Crawford, a Darlington rancher in central Idaho, uses a wide snowplow that attaches to the front of a tractor. Working with his brother, Ron, of Sandpoint, he built it from his “gold mine,” a pile of discarded parts and equipment on his ranch.

DARLINGTON, Idaho — Instead of buying specialized equipment for a specific job, central Idaho rancher Harry Crawford rummages through his “gold mine,” a cache of discarded machinery on his property.

Crawford collaborates with his brother, Ron, of Sandpoint to build new innovative time-saving devices.

“Whatever we build, it’s really challenging and rewarding when you get done and use it,” Crawford said of the times he and his brother work together on a project at his ranch near Darlington.

Neighbors also depend on his “gold mine,” dropping off their castaway parts to fortify it or stopping by to browse for useful parts for their own projects. Crawford attributes his inventive attitude to thriftiness, living 120 miles from implement dealers, a strong work ethic and a sense of humor.

“Everything around here has two lives,” Harry said.

“Or four or five lives,” Ron said, laughing.

They credit their innovations to their father, a remarkable role model.

“Dad did all the maintenance work on log-handling equipment for a career and always did his own repairs on our small farm — welding, fabricating whatever was needed,” Crawford said.

Ron said, “He taught us to be creative and to repurpose parts to make things you can’t find or can’t afford.”

Time-savers

The inventions reduce chore time for Crawford and his wife, Bev, who have been raising grain, hay and Hereford cattle since 1974 on the ranch where Bev grew up.

With calving season starting in January, they rely on an extra wide snowplow Harry and Ron fabricated. It attaches to the front of the tractor and extends beyond the sides of it, enabling wide swaths of snow to be cleared from their 10-acre calving ground. A scraper on the back functions as a counterweight.

“Bev got tired of pushing one little bucket of snow at a time,” Harry said. “It’s so much quicker and so much better than anything you can buy.”

Another time-saver is an attachment that holds several large round hay bales and connects to the back of Harry’s tractor, enabling him to make fewer trips to feed his cattle. He and a neighbor built it, using parts from several old round bale feeders, the frame of a ’51 Chevy truck, snowmobile skids and a trailer.

When confronted with the colossal job of clearing dead trees, logs and brush from their property, Harry brainstormed with his brother. To tackle the task, they built a grapple for Crawford’s John Deere 4455, 140-horsepower four-wheel-drive tractor, combining used parts from Ron’s Sandpoint property as well as Harry’s “gold mine.”

Ron’s old stumping rig that was once used to gather brush became the backbone of the grapple. They combined it with parts from an old hay swather, an old round hay baler, an old ripper, several old corrugators, and an old three-point roll-over plow.

Creative childhoods

Whenever they work together, Ron said, “It brings back memories of all the stuff we did as kids and reminds us of our parents.”

They credit their parents, Harlan and Hazel Crawford, for encouraging them to confront and solve problems — especially mechanical ones — with ingenuity, thriftiness and persistence.

During World War II, Harlan was a mechanic who repaired bombers in the U.S. Air Force while stationed in England.

After the war, he returned to his hometown of Sandpoint and spent his career maintaining huge log-handling machinery and running the family farm.

While building whatever they have brainstormed, the trio work comfortably in a 24-foot-by-36-foot shop that Ron designed.

He cut the wood for it and hauled it from Sandpoint to Darlington, where friends and family built it.

Harry sees no end to their project pipeline, depending on “the gold mine.”

“As long as the ‘gold mine’ lasts, we’ll always find something that needs to be done or built around here,” he said.

Harry Crawford

Age: 75.

Ranch: 9S Ranch in Darlington, Idaho, where he and his wife, Bev, have been raising Hereford cattle since 1974.

Education: Bachelor of science degree, mathematics, from Idaho State University.

Retired from: Department of Environmental Quality in 2008, where he taught radiation emergency response and monitored radiation at the Idaho National Laboratory; retired in 2000 as Mackay High School math teacher.

Family: Three children and two grandchildren.