[AT] Harvesting questions...

Bruce Moden brucemoden at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 2 13:19:47 PST 2008


Gene,

I'm a few years older than you, but like you I was a "migrant farm worker" (I migrated from Buffalo, where I lived to the farms of Chataqua County -40 miles away).  I worked farms from 1946 to 1952 (and then later in life on my own farm) picking, hoeing, laying irrigation pipe, haying, etc. on farms of relatives & thier friends, most farms small (100 plus acres) by today's standards.
But I do remember haying behind a team of horses and to address your "small grain" question, I worked in fields where the grain was cut & bound into "shocks" & we would go through the field & stack the shocks in (I think) stacks of 6 -standing up so the grain would dry.  These would be collected (by hand) on a hay wagon & taken up to the house & barn area where on 1 day the thrasher would come with a bunch of neighbors & thrash the grain.  This is a process that is generally reproduced a antique farm days in most fram communities every summer.

Bruce


--- On Sun, 11/2/08, Gene Waugh Elgin, Illinois USA <gwaugh at wowway.com> wrote:

> From: Gene Waugh Elgin, Illinois USA <gwaugh at wowway.com>
> Subject: [AT] Harvesting questions...
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Date: Sunday, November 2, 2008, 2:47 PM
> Not really on topic, but more so than some of our threads!!
> :-)
> 
> All fall I have been driving about 35 miles west from
> Elgin, IL (to 
> DeKalb, IL) a couple times a week, and have lots of
> questions that come 
> to mind about harvesting today, farming today, etc. 
> 
> Bear in mind that my only real exposure to farming was on
> the family 
> farms of my grandparents (I did live with them for much of
> my high 
> school years, 1958-1961) and other relatives.
> 
> I remember as a small child the upgrade from a 1 row pull
> corn picker to 
> a 2 row, and a 5' Oliver combine to a 6' IH
> combine---all pto driven, 
> mostly pulled by  an early 50s IH M or an even older
> unstyled JD G.  In 
> the early to mid 50s we even got our very own baler (IH pto
> powered), 
> man, what flexibility that gave us!!
> 
> Of course, even the one row picker was a wonderful upgrade
> for the 
> adults of the time, as they had all grown up picking corn
> by hand.  I 
> never did talk to my grandfather about how they harvested
> small grain.
> 
> On this 35 mile drive, I am almost constantly amongst
> either beans or 
> corn.  The harvesting rates are astronomical (to me).  It
> seems as 
> though they often take more time to set up a field (or
> series of fields) 
> than it does to actually combine.  By setting up, I mean
> transporting 
> equipment, mounting heads, etc. 
> 
> I guess my real question is this...I understand that in my
> youth a farm 
> might be talking of 50 - 100 acres to harvest, whereas
> today it is 500 - 
> 1000 acres or more.  But...Is the "typical"
> farmer REALLY ten times more 
> efficient today?  I know that the equipment is more than
> ten times more 
> efficient, but what good does it do to get a crop in in 5
> days if two 
> weeks would do?
> 
> I'm not looking for right or wrong answers, just
> curious.  Is it really 
> all that much more profitable today, considering the
> investment in 
> equipment, etc.?  Based on the actual hours of usage, I can
> imagine the 
> REAL cost of some of that equipment!!!
> 
> -- 
> Gene
> Gene Waugh
> Elgin, Illinois USA
> 
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