[AT] unidentified horse drawn equipment

[Indiana Robinson]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 5:09 AM, Gene Dotson <gdotsly at watchtv.net> wrote:
>    The machines with the canted gangs were rolling cultivators. They were
> getting pretty common just before the Roundup ready seeds came along. Seldom
> see anyony cultivate with anything now. The roundu takes care of the weeds
> and the min-till  and no-till systems leave enough trash and residue in the
> surface that crusting in not much of a problem now.
>
>                Gene
=============================================

Yep...
We never used those canted gang rotary cultivators in my community but
I have seen them. We all had and used rotary hoes (like the picture
link I sent) here. My father's first one was converted from horse
drawn. It was made so you could mount the hitch on the back and pull
it backward. We never did but I recall my father saying that you
pulled it backward to keep it from wrapping vines if they were too big
or grass when pulling from field to field. Our second one was a little
two row Case that I pulled a zillion miles, usually at about 10 MPH.
Later we picked up a John Deere 4 row. It wore out (the teeth wore in
length and got dull) and I bought another newer one later. The last
one I had was a very good Keewanee 4 row with 3 point hitch and that
hydraulically folded up for transport.
The one memory that always jumps to mind was when I was about 12 and
the rotary hoe threw a tennis ball sized rock that hit me between the
shoulders and almost took me down. I sure would have hated to have
fallen off and had that thing pass over me. It would have been really
pesky...
There were two main purposes of the rotary hoe. One was to break up
rain crusted soil so plants could push up, especially soybeans which
sprout with a big arched stem wit two fat bean halves/leaves. I always
liked to hit a field of corn or soybeans with one on about the third
day after planting as there were millions of tiny weeds germinating in
the top inch of soil that were easy to kill with that stirring.
As Gene said, soil with a lot of residue does not crust severely.


-- 
Have you hugged your horses today?

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com