[AT] California Combine history was Saskatchewan

Grant Brians sales at heirloom-organic.com
Tue Oct 4 10:51:38 PDT 2011


I can speak for only the California perspective where the Combine Harvester
was invented back in the 19th century. They started out ground drive because
that was the only way to handle them available when only Horses/Mules or
Steam Powered Traction Engines were available. Then when the internal
combustion engine came along, there was a proliferation of the engine
powered units, first pulled by Caterpillars or large wheeled tractors. There
were still people using the old wooden units at that time with animal power
for a while.
     Then with the passing of the great wheat boom of California (California
produced more wheat than the entire great plains and there had been fields
of wheat as large as 50,000 acres at one point in the 1880's!), the new
machinery for a time was only the large engine powered but pulled units.
Starting in the 1930's the small pull-type combines such as used in the rest
of the country (think AC All-Crop etc.) came along and picked up the
vegetable and flower seed business. Somewhere around the same time the large
self propelled units also became available and they started being used all
over for grain harvest. In the 1950's there were MF, IH, Gleaner and JD self
propelled combines all over the hilly ground in California. But Cotton took
off in California in the 1930's and 1940's and the over 1 million acres of
Cotton had to be somewhere - so not that much big grain production in the
irrigated Central Valley as compared to silage production for the dairy
cows....
     Today, there are still a few abandoned combines from the 1950's and
1960's floating around, but the ones in use for grain production are nearly
all from the 1980s to about ten years old. Yes new combines do get
purchased, but they tend to be used here for a lot longer than the roving
ones in the plains and be more like Ralph's scenario of long time use before
retirement.... Now if I could get around to refurbishing my All-Crop for
vegetable crop seed harvest....
           Grant Brians
           Hollister,California


-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com]On Behalf Of Gene Waugh
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 7:27 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Harvesting in Sask.


I´m speaking of the self-powered pull type - not as expensive as self
propelled, but more than PTO powered.  I suppose had the biggest tractor
been an old Ford or such, the self powered would be the way to go.

Gene


On Oct 4, 2011, at 7:58 AM, Gene's Wowway e-mail wrote:

> Why would they set this up as a PTO machine?  Back in "my day" even many
> small 6-7 foot combines were run by a Wisconsin or whatever.  Is it simply
> because larger tractors that can handle the PTO & pulling chores
available?
> I remember my granddad 'graduating' from a 5 ft Oliver combine to a 6 ft
> IH - How puny by today's standards!!!  They were both PTO, pulled by
> (initially) an old JD unstyled G and later, in the more modern age, a 1954
> M.
>
> GeneW
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: charlie hill
> Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2011 6:29 AM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
> Subject: Re: [AT] Harvesting in Sask.
>
> It's a heck of a machine to be running on PTO.   I guess the reason we
never
> see those around here is their size compared to our fields and roads and
the
> fact that they'd be hard to pull on our soil types.
> We have some big self propelled machines here but they take up the whole
> highway and cause a lot of grief for folks when they move.
>
> Charlie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralph Goff
> Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 9:18 PM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
> Subject: Re: [AT] Harvesting in Sask.
>
> On 10/3/2011 4:01 PM, charlie hill wrote:
>> Nice rig Ralph and good looking oats too.   How much PTO HP does it take
>> to
>> pull that combine?
>>
>>
> Thanks Charlie. The oats turned out way better than last year. I'm
> running 170 horsepower Case IH and it seems quite adequate. I think JD
> recommends 150 hp minimum horsepower for the 7721. It needs a heavy
> tractor especially in hilly land as there is a lot of weight back there.
> Especially when the grain tank is getting over half full.
>
> Ralph in Sask.
>
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