Ploughing & Harrowing with Farmall M and H Tractors

Started ploughing and harrowing on Sunday. Planning to put in ryecorn and peas for fat lamb production. The GL-9 Five Disc Plough had rusty discs to start and the first run was pretty tough. My Dad, my brother and I got out there. The lands are one chain wide (66 feet) and ten chains long. Some pictures attached of us at work. I'll add more when we have the seed drill and rollers at work.
SadFarmall

Nice pictures. I like that sepia color. Love those big trees. Looks like you'll having a good time. Wish I had a piece of land to work with like that. Property around here has gotten so expensive. My M is relegated to my yard and the nearby country roads.

I've never heard of a chain as a unit of measurement. That almost sounds biblical. Learned something new today. Interesting.

Patrick
'49M

Nice photos. Thanks. I'm guessing you're in the UK, right? The only thing we have to plow around here in NE Iowa, US is snow. We really got hammered with this current storm - still snowing after 24 hours of it. Chain used to be a common surveyor's measure. A Gunter's chain is 66 feet or 4 rods.

chains were easy to work with, in surveying. 10 square chains equals 1 acre. so 10 chains long and one chain wide = 1 acre. also, 80 chains long = 1 mile.

That flat metal coiled thing the surveyor used to carry was
called the chain. The long stick was the rod. Hence the term
surveyed by rod and chain. Now it's done with GPS and known
monuments.

Plowing sod with a disc plow, it has to be adjusted
just right or it will do a ragged job of turning the
sod under.

I don't get it. You disk immediately after you plow? No time to let it dry out?

In the early 1960s I had a part time "govmint" job in Iowa during the summer measuring fields of corn to make sure the farmers did not overplant their allotted acres during that era"s corn loan program (called Kennedy acres). The ASCS had crude photos of fields, but had to physically send someone out to measure the planted acreage for compliance.

I used a surveyor"s chain; very easy to figure acres as "20 chains long (1320 ft or 1/4 mile) and 10 chains wide" equalled 20 acres.

A "rod" was 16 1/2 ft long. Four rods equal one chain. I remember farmers in those days referring to a field as "80 rods long"... which was 1/4 mile, or 1320 ft. One mile is 5280 ft.

Measuring wheels with the little counting device were not invented yet, and hand held calculators certainly were not invented yet! Calculators were called "adding machines" and were large and powered by 110v so you would have had to have a very long extension corn to measure in the field!!

I ended up buying my own device because many farmers wanted me to measure all sorts of acres for various reasons. This device has a large ring with a handle for carrying, and has metal wire stakes with a loop at one end....when you get to the end of a "chain", you stick in another stake, push the chain thru the loop and walk another chain length. I could go a long distance without having to stop and reset. The device has a crank handle and when you were finished you just cranked up the chain and all the metal stakes came back to you and you walked away.



I remember when arriving at the field the corn would be planted the full length of the field and at the width of the corn I would find a little red flag...that flag was put there before planting. The ASCS guy had pre-measured the field so the farmer knew when to stop planting.

I rarely found a farmer cheating by moving the flag because he knew that come summer some guy like me would show up and check on him. If he did over plant, he had to plow the corn up right away as we had to recheck in a week or so.

Those chain and rod measurements came from England, I think. George Washington did a lot of surveying in his life...it"s possible he used something similiar.

I haven"t looked at this device in a long time...I think it has 10 stakes, but maybe more.
The chain looks like a narrow heavy duty measuring tape. It never rusted and is very well constructed. I think I got it thru the ASCS at that time.

When I see it hanging on the wall I often think I should use it "one of these days", but that day has not come yet.

And that"s the way it was.....

LA in WI

A bit old fashioned on my farm. We have always used 1 x 10 chains when ploughing. We disc immediately in my part of Australia because the soil is extremely hard. Basically if you leave it for 24 hours without rain, the disc harrows will hardly cut the soil at all. You have to plough in first gear here unless using a powerful diesel tractor, but even that isn't very successful as it puts so much strain on the plough that you spend more time repairing than working. Mouldboard ploughs generally won't work unless ploughing in stubble. Once the discs have been over once, we turn the diamond harrows over (spikes down) and harrow that way. In areas with softer soil it's easier to work. Thanks for all the responses,
SadFarmall

Thanks for sharing your pics and comments about your soil. Very interesting. This is your Fall season now right? Kent

Sad lives in Australia. Jim

Hi Kent, last day of Summer today. The weather is meant to be good this weekend, so will try to get everything ready, so that the seed can go in before the second week of March is over. If I leave it much later there is a risk of rain making the paddock impassable. Of course, if I put the seed in it probably won't rain until October!
SadFarmall

the hubs on the "M" pullin the disc don't look right????

Disk plows are used in relatively dry soil--usually no moisture to dry. We had to use heavily weighted disks in S Texas to break up the clods.

A tractor with those hubs and wheels has to come from Austrailia, I think they had tarriffs on anything imported if it could be could be produced in their country.

Had a distant relative stop by the farm years ago to see my Dad and he took quite an interest in my 300.Said he was sent to Australia after WW2 to establish and help run a new factory to produce m and w6 tractors.Commonwealth countries used to have a system that gave favourable tarrif rates within the former colonies so IH setup a plant to produce there rather than import.Some changes were made to better suit the tractors to local needs.Ausralian production would probably have Lucas electrical gear.

Quite right, the rear wheels don't look right for the U.S.A. Both Farmall Ms have Australian 32" cast iron rims. The entire assembly is cast iron and the wheels are fitted with weights. The tyre size is 13.5-32, which is almost impossible to find here these days. The Farmall H on steel, was on rubber with 28" rear rims, also Australian fitment. The Imperial Preference System was in use here. That is why the tractors have Lucas headlamps fitted. Some tractors did come imported with Delco Starter and Generator, but never with headlamps fitted. And yes, Australia did have huge tariffs on imported gear. It had a deleterious effect on manufacturing here because our equipment became more and more out of date. There was no incentive to improve many design or manufacture of machines because they were protected by the tariff wall. Now we're paying for it.
SadFarmall