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APRIL 2003 |
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Schrack called the number. “Yes,” the voice of an elderly man said on the other end of the line, he was the same Harvey Doyle who had made a few planes years before, but the farmer was told he couldn't possibly have a Doyle because none existed. When Schrack insisted that he really did have a Doyle, the builder finally said flatly, “No you don’t.” The farmer then described the plane in sufficient detail to convince the old man that one of his planes really did exist and would soon be flying again. Later, Doyle called back and asked if he could see the plane. He was driven to the farm for a weekend stay. Schrack returned from milking one morning to discover the old gentleman had arrived, but he was not in the house. The farmer found him sitting in the cockpit of the old plane, overjoyed at the reunion with his long-lost plane. Mr. Doyle died one year later. Schrack has in his collection an affidavit, signed by Harvey Doyle, certifying that the old plane is #5 of the 13 planes Doyle built in the late 1920s. It sold in 1929 for $2,995.
A landmark near Loganton, Pennsylvania, in the picturesque Sugar Valley, the farm is easily identified by its row of nine Harvestores. Pilots fly over the mountains and into the farm from an air show at the original home of Piper Aircraft in Lock Haven, about an hour’s flying time away. Flying low over the mountains, some in formations, the aircraft swoop down on the farm to land on a grass strip near a large cow barn.
Old Army Vehicles His collection also includes a rare 1940 M3A1 armored scout car made by White and an M9A1 half-track made by International in 1943. The community sees the military vehicles in local parades where they are driven by Schrack’s teenage grandsons, Ryan Bierly and Adam Underkoffler. When he brought the pieces of the Doyle airplane to the farm nothing remained on them to indicate the plane’s original color. But once it was identified as a Doyle, he was able to find black and white photos of it. He and his two helpers in the restoration decided from those photos that the plane could have been canary yellow and black. Later, when Mr. Doyle himself visited the farm to see the plane he had made so many years ago, he confirmed that the color was just right. But old airplanes are still just a sideline for dairyman Schrack. The big barn that houses his cows is the length of two football fields. He and his employees built it over a three-year period. They used 36-foot, 6-inch by 8-inch galvanized posts that had originally been made for use as guide rails between four-lane highways, as supports for the barn. Schrack designed his own box beam, had it built by a truss manufacturing firm, then had it covered with plywood to keep out bird nests.
The barn and milking parlor were built with the future in mind. Everything is in place to eventually run manure through a digester to produce methane for making electricity. The farm’s manure is held in a large, steel Slurrystore and in a large natural clay lagoon. “We have perfect clay here to make an earthen manure lagoon, with the design and approval of DER and other agencies.” Come summer, the vintage airplanes will be back. After a few hours of shop talk, Dan Schrack will yell, “Chow time!” and everyone will move into the large equipment shed that serves as a giant picnic pavilion. There nearly 300 visitors will dine on crispy, deep-fried turkeys, succulent roasted Yorkshire, and about a dozen homemade side dishes, all to be washed down with soda and milk. Then, as the sun nears the mountain ridges on the western horizon, pilots will once again climb back into the tiny cockpits of their old planes, take off into the wind, and fly back over the mountains with a bit less fuel in the tanks but a lot more in the belly.
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