Farmers - past and present

[Doc]

I was very involved in farming as a youngster and thought I knew a whole lot about it and the equipment involved. But last time I went to Empire Farm Days, I found myself looking at some very strange farm equipment and asking a whole lot of dumb-sounding questions. So I was wondering what some of you people remember about farming practices and equipment that over the decades has become obsolete.

As an example, I may be one of the few that is still alive that ever got involved in putting up loose hay. Or sitting on a combine bagging grain (I don't even remember that knot that I tied so many thousands of times). Or using a sickle-bar mower. Or operating a dump rake. Anyone else here that can remember articles and procedures of farming that have long ago disappeared over the years.

[growalot]

You have me beat on the hay Doc...We were tossing those 40-50 # bails in that 110 degree hay loft and stacking them. I know a lot has changed. I use to hand shovel the silage another kid threw down on to a conveyor belt that went past the stalled cows...We  had to herd them into the stalls from out side...I then had the Job of washing each and every cows teets and tail if soiled and check for signs of mastitis before the teet cups were attached. I assume they still hand clean the milk tanks and flush the pipes.. Now tails are docked and they aren't allowed out side and the herds man has to have a degree....or speak Spanish in some cases...The farms were our summer and vacation jobs...very few kids I grew up with didn't have a job or two...I had 3,both my kids had jobs. Our son on a dairy farm and a Christmas tree farm our daughter in a local deli.

Edited January 13, 2017 by growalot

[airedale]

I did not live on a farm when I was a kid but I lived in farm country and just about every job and dime I earned was doing some sort of farm work for the local farmers. 

Carrying full buckets of milk to the milkhouse and pouring them into the milk cans and putting them in the cooler I earned a big 50 cents a night for a couple of hours work.

Picked green and yellow wax beans along side black migrant workers, got 50 cents a bushel.

Planted brussel's sprouts one year, they were first planted from seed then dug up by hand when they were about 10 inches tall where they were then put on a 4 row planter with 4 seats and 4 people feeding the planter's planting 4 arms. and replanted with wider spacing.

Set up irrigation systems when growing several hundred acres of brussel's sprouts.

They were harvested in the fall and first each stalk was de-leafed by hand and then a mechanized harvester would go down the rows and cut off the stalks and convey them up a chute and into large wooden crates.

In later years the beans were were harvested mechanically , stood on back of the harvester and filled burlap bags, at the end of the rows were trucks that we would off load the bags on to.

For the above jobs I got paid a flat $7 a day and was glad to get it.

For hay it was always bails, a hot dusty job putting it up in the mow and stacking it.

The farms tractors of the day and equipment in general was much smaller than what is seen in the field now, 50 or 60 hp tractors were what most farmers used back then.

Al

Edited January 13, 2017 by airedale

[Doc]

And who can forget those damn snakes coming out of the bales when you had them lifted up and ready to throw on the wagon.

As far as loose hay, I was the little kid assigned to tramp in the hay in the mow. Yeah that little kid that suffered severely from hay fever was stomping around inside the mow ..... lol. We had the big hay fork that clamped onto the loose hay in the wagon and then was pulled up to the opening in the mow and then pulled down the tram-rail mounted to the ridge pole. It actually was quite complicated compared to the advent of hay bales. Today they don't even use bales that you can pick up by hand ....lol.

[growalot]

Oh yes they do... for when we had the goats and bought hay for them I would have to climb up into the hay lofts of the farms we bought from and throw those bales onto the trailer and the back of the pick up truck...then unload them and stack them in our barn...and they haven't gotten any lighter over the years, nor less dusty. In fact we still get straw bales for the dogs and chickens.

[Paula]

I spent my summers with family in Varysburg. I remember helping cousins pick up loose hay from the field, I don't know how it got up to the loft that was long time ago. 

[growalot]

They had conveyor belts. Then we did like a firemans bucket brigade with hay bales to get them all the way to the back of the barn,  stacking them. Man they were good sized barns too.

[Jeremy K]

 

[Paula]

They didn't have conveyor belts, they actually just couldn't afford equipment or machines. That is why they got the loose hay by hand now that I think of it. 

[Paula]

Love that

[philoshop]

I vividly remember being knocked on my butt by a haybale coming onto the wagon when I was about eight years old or so. My Italian grandfather picked my scrawny a** up and said, "Now you pay attention?". I've never turned my back on a farm implement, or animal, since.

I still do a fair amount of Ag work, mostly mowing, with the computerized machines that don't miss a single sprig of alfalfa. And I still don't turn my back on those machines.

[dbHunterNY]

i'm not old.  only in my 30's but still a lot has changed and still changes.  milking is gone from free stall to automated parlors.  hardly anyone plows anymore.  everything around here is no-till.  hay harvesting has changed a ton.  loose hay was before my time but many baled it into small square bales.  now you have anything from haylage, plastic wrapped round bales, to large square bales. small square bales still common though.  stacked on a flat wagon.  now there's loader attachments that grab 9 bales at once to stack them, otherwise they're shot through a belt kicker aimed any where you want into a steel frame sided wagon.  mowed it with haybines (sickle bar style cutting) with lots of triangular blades with guards to replace most with pop rivets, then later soft bolts that broke all the time.  if you went through mowed hay it plugged up.  now hay is mowed by a discbine that's got a row of spinning blades like a lawn mower that articulates out to the side with hydros.  single row rakes that pulled the hay into rows to bale are now replaced with ones that fold out with hydros to do multiple rows in one pass.  more out west where they have room to run they've got everything from automated irrigation sprayers that go around the field unmanned to much larger tractors with touch screen display and gps "autopilot".  LCD displays show how full wagons and grain bins are.  a lot has changed.  barns can now be engineered for the whole process efficiency.  guy not far away sold his vineyard and decided to be a dairy farmer.  new barns alone are close to $4 million.  crap isn't spread on fields it's collected in containment and methane gas collected and burned to heat water to clean milking facilities and supply heat.

before you didn't go to college because you were a farmer now you go to college for ag business to run a farm like one.

[Jeremy K]

I've slung my share of hay and straw , looked after my uncles horses while he was away a couple times . Thats the only farming experience i have . My dad grew up on a horse farm ,i've heard stories.

[dbHunterNY]

1 hour ago, Doc said:

And who can forget those damn snakes coming out of the bales when you had them lifted up and ready to throw on the wagon.

As far as loose hay, I was the little kid assigned to tramp in the hay in the mow. Yeah that little kid that suffered severely from hay fever was stomping around inside the mow ..... lol. We had the big hay fork that clamped onto the loose hay in the wagon and then was pulled up to the opening in the mow and then pulled down the tram-rail mounted to the ridge pole. It actually was quite complicated compared to the advent of hay bales. Today they don't even use bales that you can pick up by hand ....lol.

40+ lb hay bales still pretty common Doc.  many smaller farms, horse farms, suburban folks looking for mulch or food for rabbits all need them.  even people raising a feeder steer for meat look for them.  we even get traveling zoos and urban dairy farms that buy those bales. they can't handle and use the bigger ones like 1200lb round bales we've done before.  still in high demand.

[dbHunterNY]

when i lived on the farm i was just as heavy but 2 full pant sizes thinner.  i could easily carry a few seed bags on each shoulder.  now doing that would probably break me in half.  so the help has definitely changed.

Edited January 13, 2017 by dbHunterNY

[philoshop]

A lot has changed over the years. But the satisfaction of doing a hard days' work, properly, remains. A good dinner, shared with people you can trust with your life, and a couple of snorts of good whiskey at the end, mean a lot. I wouldn't trade it for a pair of loafers and a monogrammed briefcase, but that's just me.

[Jeremy K]

How about handling straw all day and coming home with dried blood down both legs and arms ,that stuff is sharp.

[ATbuckhunter]

A lot has changed. I personally never worked on a farm, but my father grew up on one. Where he grew up, no one had tractors so ploughing the fields were done by the power of a bull and all harvesting took place by hand. Now everyone has tractors there (which he didn't have till he was 17) and many have given up on farming. 

[Pygmy]

My Dad had a Ford 8N and much of his equiptment was horse drawn (sulky)  devices converted to tractor use,,,

The old sickle bar mower was designed to have a person riding on it  raising and lowering the drawbar,,,His dump hayrake was converted to tractor use, as was his corn cultivator, upon which I spent many hours steering the tines with my feet, because this was before the days of atrazine, and later, roundup...

The first few years on the farm we put in hay loose, using a hayloader behind the haywagon and the big fork on a rail in the top of the barn to unload the hay into the mows...it took a couple more guys with pitchforks in the mows to spread the hay around...

[wolc123]

I was about 12 when my grandad bought our first hay baler.   It did not take long for me to miss the loose hay.  Stacking those heavy bales up in the hot, dusty barn was tough, dirty work for a kid, and having to cut that twine to get some down at chore time was a pain.  I don't remember any hard work with the loose hay, and getting just enough down to feed the animals was easy.  We also used a hayloader behind the wagon for the loose hay.  The old forks and rails are still up in our two old barns, that my great-great grandad built back in the Civil war days.   My dad still tells stories from back when they used horses for power.  Grandad got his first tractor (John Deere model M) back in 1950.   My dad still uses that and it's 2-bottom plow on his garden every year, but that tractor is about as wore out as one could be and still run.   I remember the spline wearing out and a rear wheel falling off one time while I was cultivating corn.   All that holds it on today, is a perimeter weld around the end of the axle.  I do like the sound of that old, 2-cylinder, big-bore gas engine and I liked cultivating with that better than the Farmall cub that I use on my foodplots these days.   Sighting the corn row along the center ridge on the hood on that JD was a lot easier on the neck than looking right down at it with the "cultivision", offset-engine Farmall.   It also made higher ground speed possible (about double the horsepower helped there also).         

One thing is for sure, growing crops to feed deer is a lot more fun than doing it to feed livestock.  I am very glad that I don't do that anymore, and I feel sorry for those who do.  We sold all the cattle after grandad died when I was 15, and it was the best thing we ever did. There is nothing fun about trying to get hay in before the rain, or getting combines and tractors stuck trying to harvest corn on a wet fall.   Dealing with sick animals and vets and frozen water in the winter sucks. Raising crops for deer gives you all of the fun parts, and almost none of the bad, when it comes to farming.  The deer harvest the crops themselves, water themselves all winter, don't ever seem to get sick, and taste as good or better than the beef.  Certainly the venison is a lot better for your health than that fatty beef.  Grandad died of a heart-attack at 69.  Hopefully a venison-rich diet will give me a few more years to enjoy time with my own grandkids some day.            

[vizslas]

hand shucking feed corn by the bucket full and then go drop it in the feed mixer .. dam watch your eyes slopping nasty pigs and chickens .All the fun things I don't want to shovel cow shit into spreaders ever again. it was more fun running the mountains with our shot guns and our lawn tractor minus the mowing deck.

 

[philoshop]

There might just be a correlation here. I always loved school, because they were days off from doing real work. Kids today think that school is work.