[AT] Thorns

[Indiana Robinson]

My parents bought this farm in 1951 after it had been badly farmed for many
years by a series of terrible renters. Recalling back I have trouble
grasping just how backward much of american farming was until after WW-II.
The great depression sat farming back a lot as most just tried to hang on.
In those post WW-II days my father was quite progressive and so were many
of our neighbors but there were a large number that were still farming that
should have not been farming. My father bought a field sprayer after the
war and he kept pretty busy spraying for neighbors as it was the only field
sprayer in the neighborhood. This farm was horribly eroded with gullies
that were deep enough to hide cows. Fence lines were grown up as wide as
30' mostly with honey locust thorn trees, many with 12 to 18 inch trunks
and a zillion of them with 1 to 3 inch trunks growing only a few inches
apart. Back then most farms had a certain amount of permanent pasture for
grazing horses and cattle etc.  On this farm those were covered about 80%
with honey locust. Many large areas were even impassable walking. They had
even abandoned one 20 acre field as "worn out" and no longer worth planting.
We worked really hard during the early 1950's to make a real farm out of
the place. Much of the work until about 1956 was with a Deere crawler,
first an MC then a new 40C. The dozer blade was in constant use both on
thorn trees and filling gullies. Building new fences was also constant.
Another constant was spraying... From the time I was 11 I spent much of
every year except winter spraying thorn trees, basically with agent
orange... Mixing 2-4-D, 2-4-5-T and stove oil.
It became standard practice for my father and I when doing field work to
refuel the tractors each evening and if we had come in before dark we would
each take out our pocket knives and working, one of us on each side of a
tractor, start digging out thorns in the tires. We did that while also
discussing the day now done and planning the next day and future days and
projects.


.

On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 2:46 AM Steve W. <swilliams268 at frontier.com> wrote:

> Mike 1countryguy wrote:
> > new tires and tubes for my 4 x4 were over 7,000 dollars several years
> > ago.   That makes renting/hiring a dozer much more affordable.   Unless
> > you can get some tires that the Mennonite's use In northern Richland
> > County, Ohio.
>
>
> I have a few tires around here with TireJect in them. Stuff seems to
> work a lot better than slime but isn't as easy to get. Doesn't cause the
> rims to rot either.
> One of the demo mowers I ran last year had air free tires on it, like
> the Tweel. Worked OK but didn't have a lot of traction on wet grass or
> mud. Probably would have been good on ice like on an ATV/UTV because you
> could drive ice studs into them, but they are $$$$$$4
>
> --
> Steve W.
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> AT at lists.antique-tractor.com
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>


-- 
-- 

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