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     Clyde Carter's motto is "tough times don't last, tough people do," and he's proved it by succeeding in a difficult business for more than 30 years.

     Traveling out West in the summer of 1972, Clyde Carter was on his way to visit a cousin, Roy Rogers, when he saw "this great big clump of hay.  It was dark and you couldn't tell exactly what it was, but I knew it was hay."

     The Rogers farm was near the Pella, Iowa, headquarters of Vermeer, the company which produced the world's first round baler.  And it was the same place Carter was snowbound for a week when buying mules with his father 20 years before.

     "The next day we went down to see it.  It was alfalfa that had been baled six weeks and had had six inches of rain on it in the last two weeks.  It was still as pretty as you ever saw.  I loved it."

     When the factory shipped in his baler the next spring, they inquired if Carter knew of anyone who would be good to market their new product.

     He decided he was their man.  "I sold the second one and then the third on.  None could be delivered until June.  I never hoped to sell more than five or six, you know, what the market would take."  So far, his record is 77 sold in one season, and 75 the next year.  He's been selling an average of 50 for the last several years.  

     He attributes much of the success to his brother.  "We have been partners from the beginning.  Billy Lee gives the best service in the world.  He knows more about round balers than anybody between here and the factory."

     "You've got to believe it to do it.  It's just as easy to smile as not."

*Taken from an article written by Jon Ruetz in 19

*Record is now 96 balers in a season