Old Tractor and silo filling photo

This is another photo I found going through my parents things. On the back it says: "Fall 1948, Our F20 with Emil's PAPEC Silo Filler". Emil was one of my Grandfather's brothers and was my Dad's Uncle.

This was taken the fall after my Grandfather passed away and it looks like his brothers came over to help with the harvest. I can't see the team of horses in front of the wagon, but I know Grandpa still had them when he passed away.

Boy does that photo bring back some memories for me...I've unloaded quite a few loads of corn stalks into/onto a Papec chopper/blower. I remember that the M/MD being used...and on rare occasions the F-20...also an RD-4 Caterpillar that had a belt pulley on the rear.

Dad was farm manager at Children's Home for 40 years and he had a "crew" of probably a dozen teenage boys wielding machetes cutting the stalks and loading onto trucks and trailers to be brought to the barn.

At that time, there were three silos to be filled that were about the size of what appears in the photo...two terracotta block construction and one metal.

Thanks for posting the photo...

Rick

Many a silo was filled around here with Papec machines back in those days. A guy I used to work with at PCA had earlier built most of the concrete stave upright silos around here (he was also the Surge guy)- lots of little farms had them. By the time I started at PCA in '74, I can't think of any that were still in use. Just too labor intensive, I guess- both putting it in, and taking it out. Everybody around here went to pit and bunker silos.

Great to have old photos to keep the memories alive.

Nice old picture. A few falls ago my amish neighbors bought some standing corn a mile or two from their farm. They borrowed some rubber tired flat wagons, and me and another neigbor pulled them on the road with tractors. In the field horses were on the binder, and at the silo a Dietz? tractor on the filler. The older ensilage cutters are becoming less common, more common is to modify a pull type new holland chopper.
Josh

Wow,that silo is in really bad shape!! Did it ever collapse? We had a wooden one as well and finally replaced it in 1958 (11'x30' $800)

Did you ever see a Papec "unitractor" ? When I got out of the Army, I went to work for Lundell Mfg Co in Cherokee Ia. At the time they were building what they called the Lundell 2020. They resembled later windrowers, with caster wheels at the rear. Steered with 2 levers like a crawler. They had a contract to build some (I have no idea how many) for Papec. That was a company I had never heard of at that time.

When I was a teenager back in the 50s, my Dad used a Papec silage blower made in Shortsvile NY would not of guessed one of them would have made it all the way across the country. We had an Octagon silo about 14 ft. across, and ran the blower with an 1951 8 N Ford that dad bought new in 1951. The 8n ran the PTO corn harvester and then it was hooked to the blower and loads were hauled with my Uncles Dodge Doodlebug. The horses went down the road when the 8N arrived. I never really minded pitching corn silage out of that little silo. Took off a 4inch layer every day to feed 15 cows and young stock. Dad built a narrow silage cart that would fit around the corners in the barn. He milked the cows with a Universal milker that milked two at a time and the vacuum pump hung from a track and followed the milker along as the cows were milked. Had a radio from a 1949 Buick and we used to listen to The Cisco Kid and The Lone Ranger at night. Some day I'll have to write all this down for my Grandchildren.

One of my neighbors here in Michigan used a Papec one row chopper for many years. He milked about 30 head and it was about the right size for his operation. After he sold the cows the Papec went to the next years consignment auction.

about 1974 i worked for an implement dealer. the salesman talked about working for a man that sold milking machinces. after the salesman sold the farmer on milking machines he would go to the farm to help the farmer learn how to use it.
he said he would often go home covered in --it and have a bunch of black and blue marks on him as the cows weren't to happy with the milkers and noise they made.
i think he also sold barn cleaners which most farmers were glad to buy.

I wonder how they kept them up. My Dad used to tell me they got loose like that when they were empty; they dried out. I would not have climbed up one like that to pull the filler pipe up!

The old wood silo was torn down in 1953 and a concrete stave silo replaced it. The wood was 2"x6" straight grain redwood, made great 30' rafters for a leanto feed shed for the dairy cows....James

Our place must've had an old wood stave silo at one time. It was gone when my dad bought the place in '50. The former owners stored the staves under the hay mow. The were hard, clear, t&g full 2x6, what looked like southern yellow pine. Each one had an ever so slight radius to it so it would make a circle upon assembly. For years we used those stave for everything and the NEVER rotted. I used the last of em to make an upstairs loft in my pole barn. He built a porch steps in '50 and painted them and they lasted well into the 90's in full weather.

I love the old farm photos, thanks for sharing. I've never seen a silo like that one.
This is one that my grandfather built in 1908 and is still standing. It was last used in the 50's

Where was that Children's Home? There is one in Winston-Salem, N.C. that I know about. There was a dairy operation there until maybe the early 1970's. I knew the dairy manager from seeing him at DHIA meetings. After they shut down the dairy operation he worked for the Surge dairy equipment dealer in this area. Can't think of his name right now , but it will come to me.

The old wood stave silo on our place blew down in the 1950 hurricane. I was only three at the time and don't really remember it. I do remember the snow fence silo that Dad put up on the foundation for a few years after. He quit milking in 1954, so '53 was probably the last time it was used.

I do remember him filling the silo with a chopper like that in the picture. He never owned a chopper, there was a man in town who went around every fall with a Farmall H and a chopper, filling silos. Dad only planted an acre or two of corn, and cut it all by hand. I remember him cutting a few bundles every night after chores so that the hired help would have something to load in the morning when they got there.

In the late eighties we had a hired man who told of filling a silo on his father's farm when he was young. One of his brothers was in the silo spreading the silage and treading it down, and this guy was feeding the chopper. He threw in a freshly killed woodchuck and his shirt, then ran and hid. When he finally came out of hiding, his father and brothers and the two state cops who came to investigate the "accident" took turns pounding the snot out of him. I never was sure whether to believe the story or not.

My neighbor has an old barn and wooden silo still standing. Not being used though.