Never Too Big

By: Dan Miller

Joe Nichols’ shop, outside Cadiz, Kentucky, “was-is” an amazing sight. At the time it was built in 2008, the half-million-dollar project yielded 14,500 square feet of work and administrative space. The maintenance area alone measured 8,000 square feet. Even so, the floor space was all but consumed by a John Deere DB60 planter, measuring 60 feet long from tip to tip, and a Deere 9230 — all 350 horsepower of it — that pulled into the shop.

The shop’s main entrance opened by way of a 42-foot, full-clearance, bifold door. The operations center was wired with a mile and a half of digital cable. The computer server was tied to the outside world with its own high-speed T1 line. The shop was self-sufficient; a backup generator could run it entirely in the event of power failure. Each computer station had its own backup power.

“Some people might say this is over the top,” says Joe Nichols, who was farming 17,000 acres at the time. “But we operate on the right side of the decimal points,” he added, explaining the thin operating margins by which his Seven Springs Farms functions. “The detail and the organization of this shop are part of that.”