[Farmall] practically new 140

[John Hall]

I think I have seen one in person and another on Craigslist a while 
back. As luck would have it a 230 showed up tonight. It's in the eastern 
part of the state, same as the 240 was. Wondering if cotton growers used 
to used them?

John Hall

On 11/29/2016 1:18 PM, mspeters at tds.net wrote:
> To be honest, there weren`t many Farmall 240`s in any area. IH didn`t make many 240`s in the Farmall version. Many more utilities were made.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Grant Brians" <sales at heirloom-organic.com>
> To: "Farmall/IHC mailing list" <farmall at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 9:35:12 AM
> Subject: Re: [Farmall] practically new 140
>
> To the best of my knowledge Farmall 240s were always rather uncommon
> here. Strawberries and Cucumbers for Pickles were the only original uses
> that I remember noticing. The really common IH tractors here were all
> 60s/70s models. LOTS of 656, 1066, some larger ones were in use and some
> of those are still in use. In the 1950s, the big sellers were TD6
> crawlers, M's and follow ons, the A/Super A/100/130 series for small
> scale crops. Most cultivating tractors sold in the 1950s were Olivers,
> John Deeres and AC. Gilroy had the IH dealership in our valley and there
> were many in that area. The 560 was also common. The San Francisco Bay
> Area and San Jose ate most of the area north of us and so the amount of
> farming is much diminished.
>        We use the single bed tractors for cultivation of small patches of
> crops. I grow over 200 different crops now, so it is necessary. The 40"
> bed crops - Beans, Peas and a few other are cultivated 2 bed. In the
> past I used the Olivers and cultivated 4 bed almost exclusively. Listing
> of the beds is as noted before all either 3 or 4 bed depending on the
> bed width and circumstances. Larger operations and ones that grow only a
> few crops will have a custom listing service come in and list 4 80" beds
> at a time or 8 40" beds or 5 60" beds. In California's Central Valley I
> have seen quite a few 30' wide listers in recent years with the crawlers
> they use for most tillage.
>                 Grant Brians - Hollister,California farmer
> p.s. Orchards, vineyards and field crops are another story for another
> time....
>
> On 11/28/2016 5:53 PM, John Hall wrote:
>> How common are the 240's in your area? I've only ran across a couple
>> here.  I never understood why nobody wanted to use the 2 row machines in
>> tobacco. I had a friend who was a die hard Deere guy that bought a C and
>> used it one year in tobacco. There were quite a few C's around, but they
>> never enjoyed popularity cultivating except in corn, I imagine that
>> stopped in the 60's since they were so small. It wasn't until the 80's
>> that 2 row cultivation of tobacco took off--and that was with 3pt hitch
>> cultivators. I could see staying with one row units if that is how you
>> bedded your land, but 2 and 4 row bedders were around long before that.
>> Heck we used a 4 row bedder, a two row planter, and did all the
>> cultivating with  two one row Super A's. Stubborn I guess?
>>
>> John Hall
>>
>>
>> On 11/28/2016 12:49 PM, Grant Brians wrote:
>>> John, I'll admit that I would prefer not to have to have those 34" rows
>>> too. Running two sets of equipment for 80" and 60" wheel spacings is not
>>> too bad, but adding the oddball for Potatoes is more challenging. Our
>>> previous Oliver Potato planter allowed me to squeeze the rows a bit and
>>> use the 60" tractors, but not this one. The yields are better at 34"
>>> than 30" too as weed control is easier. That Farmall 240 tricycle makes
>>> it easy to handle the cultivation.
>>>          Where all of this does get annoying and hard is irrigation pipe
>>> laying and pickup. With the different spacings, we have to try not to
>>> move pipe between different spacings to avoid driving over beds....
>>>          I had to chuckle about your garden comment. One year I planted 14
>>> acres of green beans we had to hand pick - LOTS of labor bills. The time
>>> I planted for the freezer and they came in with the self-propelled large
>>> mechanical harvesters that was a really quick pick! 27 Acres in 11 hours.
>>>                   Grant Brians - Hollister,California farmer
>>>
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