THRESHING NOTE — book the machinery clearance check before the season starts, not during it: a door that stops the combine fourteen inches short of the shed costs an hour a day for the whole harvest. The yard measures both towns free — (555) 128-6640.
Since 1978, measured in the dirt
The yard, in figures
High-lift & full-rise machinery doors
The door the combine deserves: strutted 24-gauge sections on high-lift or full-rise track, drums and springs sized to the door’s weighed pounds, and a bottom seal that keeps the swallow nests and the threshing dust on their own sides of the wall. Wind-rated to the valley face your shed actually looks down.
Sliding-barn & Dutch-door conversions
Half the barns in Marlow Fork were hung before sectional track existed. We convert them honestly — kept boards where the joinery is sound, hangers and track rated for a barn door’s honest tonnage, and a Dutch split wherever a horse learned long ago that the bottom half opening alone is the whole point.
Insulated shop & tack-room doors
R-16 cores where the tack room or the workshop shares a wall with heat, belt-drive operators under sixty decibels when that wall is the house, chain drive where nobody has to hear it — and battery backup standard, because the ridge loses power on exactly the week the lambs arrive.
Rates for the 2026 season
The yard card — installed, hauled, balanced
The number beside each line is the whole job: measure in your yard, delivery, the old door in our truck, and the clearance test witnessed before we leave. Nobody in this valley has time for a price that moves at the driveway.
12×12 machinery sectional, installedfrom $3,150
Strutted 24-gauge · 50,000-cycle pair · wind-rated to the valley face
14×14 high-lift conversion, installedfrom $4,400
Track, drums and springs re-engineered to the machine, not the old door
Sliding-barn conversion, hardware & hangfrom $2,700
Boards kept where sound · hangers rated to the door’s tonnage
Insulated shop door, R-16, installedfrom $2,380
Belt drive where the house shares the wall, chain where it does not
Torsion spring pair, 50,000-cycle, wound$342
Matched to the door’s weighed pounds — both springs, always
Operator with battery backup, fitted$615
Programmed, photo-eyes proven, twenty backup cycles on the meter
Yard measure & clearance survey$0
Both towns, any machine you can name
How the yard runs a job
A season, start to clearance test
The same five moves on every farm in both towns — the only variable is which machine has to fit through the opening.
The yard call
We come to you, tape and level in hand: opening, headroom, side room — and the widest machine on the place measured to the inch, because the door is sized to the combine, not the other way round.
The machine math
Clearance plotted for every rig that enters — raise the track, deepen the drums, or convert to full-rise. You see the rise height on paper before you see the invoice.
The build week
Sections cut and strutted at the yard, springs wound to the built door’s weighed pounds, hardware kitted per machine. A missing bolt is found on our bench, never in your shed.
The hang
One day, between cuttings. Old door out and gone, track dead plumb, the pair wound, photo-eyes proven with a two-by-four while the coffee is still hot in the truck.
The clearance test
You drive the widest machine through — three passes, both mirrors, no holding your breath. Then you sign, and the ten-year warranty starts from the last pass.
The last two seasons
Openings that earn their keep
Six farm doors photographed at the clearance test, nothing styled and nobody posed. The machinery in three of these pictures is wider than the doors it replaced.
The yard’s position
The door is farm equipment. We spec it like equipment.
A house door opens four times a day and a machinery door opens forty in season — which is why the same spring pair that lasts twenty years in town is half spent by second threshing here. Cressy & Hale winds 50,000-cycle pairs on every working opening, rates the track to the machine that uses it, and books the hang between cuttings because a shed with no door and a combine in the field is the most expensive week a farm can schedule. The clearance test is the whole philosophy: the door is finished when the widest rig goes through without anybody flinching.
The clearance test is the sign-off
Widest machine, three passes, both mirrors — witnessed before the truck leaves. If the door ever fails to clear what we measured it against, the re-engineering is on the yard.
The old door took the mirrors off the swather twice a season for eleven years. Cressy & Hale measured the machine instead of the hole, raised the track fourteen inches, and the same swather now clears with a hand either side. The clearance test with the combine was the first time anybody in this family signed anything happily.
They kept the barn’s original boards and hung them on hardware rated for what the door actually weighs now. From the lane it is still my grandfather’s barn. From inside, it opens like the barn he always deserved.
February outage, four days, minus eleven, and fifty ewes in the barn. The garage door on backup power opened every feeding, and the insulated tack-room door kept the waterline from freezing on the shared wall. My wife has stopped calling it “the fancy door.”
The five the yard always gets
Questions from the cab
The five the yard answers across a tailgate. Anything else, the phone at the yard runs seven to six — and the radio in the truck after that, in season.
High-lift or standard track — what is the actual difference?
Standard track follows the ceiling and a raised door still hangs down into the opening; high-lift carries the horizontal run higher before it turns, so a raised door sits near the ceiling and the clearance underneath belongs to your mirrors and your header rack. If anything you own is taller than the opening is wide, the answer is high-lift, and the machine math decides it in one visit.
Convert the barn to sectional or keep it sliding?
Keep it sliding where the boards are sound and the barn has the wall for hangers — it is the honest repair, and it keeps the face a century of weather already approved. Convert where the opening has to seal against dust and January, or where a machine needs the full rise a sectional gives. We quote both against the same measurements and let the use decide.
What does wind-rated mean for a valley shed?
It means the door assembly was tested to hold a design pressure — on the open valley faces we serve, typically DP+40 to DP+55 — instead of bowing out in the first real blow. The rating comes from the opening size and the exposure your shed actually faces, which is why we survey the ground and not just the door.
Belt or chain for the shop beside the house?
Belt where a wall or ceiling is shared with people: a steel-reinforced belt runs under sixty decibels, which is a conversation, not a tractor. Chain where the shop stands alone — tougher, cheaper, and the only listeners are the swallows. We price both on the card and the floor plan picks.
Why a 50,000-cycle pair on a farm door?
Cycle arithmetic. Season traffic — combine, baler, feed wagon, the truck that is somehow always leaving — can put four thousand openings a year through a machinery door. A 20,000-cycle pair, the house standard, is half spent by second threshing; a 50,000 pair outlives the mortgage. The upgrade is a hundred and change on a job that already has a truck in your yard.
The yard measures both towns free, machine included · (555) 128-6640 · yard@cressyhale.example · hangs booked between cuttings
Get the machine measured
Opening size, the widest rig on the place, and when the shed can spare a day — that is the whole quote. The yard call is free and the number does not move after it is written. yard@cressyhale.example