Farming Pictures From Back Home

John B. · Feb 6, 2013

Here's some pictures I took in the 1980's from my dad's farm. We didn't farm real big but he was able to raise 4 children. We always raised vegetables and sold them out of what we called our Fruit Shed. That's an old Gleaner "E" Combine he bought new in 1969 if my memory his correct. Dad always sowed wheat with Mom's Farmall "H" and his old steel wheel McCormick Deering Wheat Drill. That's a 560 Diesel on the auger wagon. We didn't have a dump on our truck so we always had to use the lift at the elevator.

Mark-Ia · Feb 6, 2013

The "good old days" when things were a lot simpler.

John B. · Feb 6, 2013

Simpler yes! I would love to have that small machinery now.

centralilbaler · Feb 6, 2013

that lift at the elevator brings back memories!

NY 986 · Feb 6, 2013

Nice pictures.

Lou Kocon · Feb 6, 2013

Thanks for sharing.

Wheat Farmer · Feb 6, 2013

Great photos. Thanks John B.
I remember those lifts, Drills, No cab combines. Some day I will get some of mine scanned. We have a lot in common.

JayinNY · Feb 6, 2013

I love pics like that, I know times may have been hard, but it looks like a great way of life!

sd pete · Feb 6, 2013

I would rather see pics like yours than the new big stuff.

paul · Feb 6, 2013

Dad talked them into giving me and him a ride along in the truck lift one time.

OSHA woulda hung them these days for that, but it was a fun ride.

Paul

Larry NEIL · Feb 6, 2013

Really neat pictures John, thanks for sharing them.

rrlund · Feb 6, 2013

I worked at the elevator one fall during corn and dry bean harvest.You could lift the front of a truck just a little,then back up or go ahead and it would move on a track to line you up with the pit and still raise straight up. We ran a Chevy 4 wheel drive up on there one time right after full time 4 wheel drive came out on them. The guy gassed it a little and it spit the platform right out from under the truck.

37chief · Feb 6, 2013

The lift at the elevator was interesting. I hauled lima beans one summer for one of the farmers in the early 60's. The elevator used a fork lift to raise the truck and dump the beans. This was a fun job. Stan

The Red · Feb 6, 2013

Is that a Gleaner A combine? I know of one still in a shed near my farm that last ran in the 1990 harvest. It has a cab though.

Just an Okie · Feb 6, 2013

WOW, photos brought back a flood of memories. Just substitute the corn for wheat and would have been our farm. We sewed wheat with a steel wheel massey harris and a "modern" dempster rubber tired drill, pulled with a Super M and a D-17 allis. Had a Massey Super 26 and a Massey 92 combine. Had a "51 binder and a "49 ford wheat truck. Also had grain racks on the 74 Ford 3/4 ton pickup.

LOVE your photos, my eyes got a little bit misty.

The Red · Feb 6, 2013

When I lived in Enid, OK in the 1970s (Vance AFB), my wife's family had friends down in Hennesy. He was a wheat farmer with really old grain trucks and a Farmall regular I got to play around on. He used one of those custom crews to get the wheat in. I don't recall he having a combine.

SweetFeet · Feb 6, 2013

John B.,

Really, really, really cool pics! Geez, that truck lift looks like a scary proposition - never seen one of those babies. Love the outhouse too.

The pics remind me of my dad farming in the 70"s when I was little...except his stuff was John Deere and Chevy. Thanks for posting.

RBnSC · Feb 6, 2013

Dad had an E he bought used and then turned around and bought a brand new A2. Man I was proud, that was the first new thing he had ever bought. I ran it a good bit myself. We have so few pictures of us growing up.
Ron

GeneMO · Feb 6, 2013

I still have my dads McCormick wheat drill. He always told me the charts for setting it were wrong because it was intended to have had steel wheels, but came with rubber on it.

Also that truck lift, they had them at home, and I have used them, but the dropped several trucks over the years and they are a thing of the past now.

good pics!

Gene

Rick Kr · Feb 6, 2013

great pictures. Thats how I remember the smaller farms as I was growing up. I was born in 1969, I guess I remember from 1974 on.

Things started changing quick then. My cousins started buying up all the 80 acre farms as others got out. Everything from 50-70hp to big Steigers and John Deeres overnight it seems.

Rick

larrystinescorner · Feb 6, 2013

Very nice pictures,,,Thanks!

robgIN · Feb 6, 2013

neat pictures, brings back some memories. We usued to take grain to local elevator in 1950 Dodge pickup with sideboards and it got hoisted up to dump like that.

RandyB(MI) · Feb 6, 2013

Nice memories brought back. Farming, and especially harvest time were actually "fun" back then and part of that was attributable to the fact that the "break even point" was a lot lower percentage of the total acres harvested than it is today. It becomes fun after the break even point is met. Nothing like a hay baling team of 6 teenagers setting on an empty wagon in the field chowing down on a bushel of burgers brought from town by the land owner for lunch break or the supper that came later. Nothing like the smell of harvest time. Do you suppose todays corporate farmers even get to smell it??

samn40 · Feb 6, 2013

Thanks for sharing....The 'tipping' mechanism was interesting. If anyone would have tried that in our area, they would have been locked up!....But , hey it seemed to work for quite a number of you guys.
Sam

Rich Iowa · Feb 6, 2013

Those sure are some great pictures. Good looking setup, wouldn't mind having some of that now. The planks on the lift at the elevator the truck is parked on would make me a little nervous.

tomstractorsandtoys1 · Feb 6, 2013

Nice pics, thanks for posting. Dad had an E combine with a cab.I never ran it but do remember it.He really liked it and traded it on a used F with 4row cornhead.

Jim in Sask · Feb 6, 2013

Those are great pictures. The elevator lift brought back some memories. Back in the late 50's Dad had a 1-ton truck with no hoist. On Saturdays he'd put a load of barley on the truck and off to town we'd go. First stop was the feed mill where he'd dump the grain, they'd grind it while we got our groceries, then we'd stop on the way home for the ground up grain "chop". Most times mom and I would stay in the truck while it was being unloaded, riding as the lift went up and came back down. I always got a kick out of that.

Royse · Feb 6, 2013

I remember a lift like that at the elevator.
We pulled our combine behind the tractor. Harvested 66 inches at a time.
Pulled a single row corn picker behind the same tractor for corn.
Used an elevator to get the corn from the gravity box to the corn crib and
shoveled it out of the corn crib into the truck to go to the elevator.
The lift at the elevator was a welcome sight!

Thanks for the great memories. Hard work, but good times!

John B. · Feb 6, 2013

Those lifts were in every elevator my dad went to when I was growing up.

Paul from MI · Feb 6, 2013

As a kid back in Ohio our local elevator had a lift somewhat similar to the pictures, except that it had a sort of hook arrangement that fastened on the front tires of the wagon or truck. No boards under the wheels. One of the larger farmers had a wagon made out of a short semi trailer, probably held about 300 bushels. He had a big load on it and when they tried to dump it they tore the lift rails right out of the wood beams in the old mill. Nobody dumped any grain for a few days after that! When a wagon was up in the air the tongue would drop and someone would have to "walk" the tongue out from under the wagon to keep it from holding everything up in the air. No OSHA in those days, just a whole bunch of common sense, and noone ever got hurt. The old mill was built in the early 1900's and hauling a load of grain to town, waiting in line with everyone else was social experience. Sometimes we left everything set outside in line until morning when the elevator got behind.

casenut1 · Feb 6, 2013

thanks, brings back a lot of memories from the 60's. we had all of that old stuff.

Nice · Feb 7, 2013

Where are the pics from? Do you still farm any?

W_B · Feb 7, 2013

Our operation was on about the same scale in the late 60s early 70s, we did about 300 acres and fed some steers. My dad worked full time for the city and farmed with a guy he worked with. We had a Farmall Cub, AC WD, Fordson Dexta and Ford 6000 Commander for tractors and a small IH combine (with a cab... with heater too!), gravity wagon and an old 2 ton GMC grain truck, I think it was a 1949. We had the usual plows, disk, spike tooth harrow and 4 row JD planter, a steel wheel grain drill and a sprayer. It was my job to calibrate the sprayer. We also baled a lot of hay, upwards of 3,000 bales a year, so we had wagons, rake and a NH baler and had a neighbor cut it for us in exchange for some hay for his steers. Good times.

jm. · Feb 7, 2013

As I remember about half the trucks that used the lift either had to be pushed out of the way or smoked when they started. I think lots of time the gas would run back from the engine and they would run the battery down trying to get started. I can remember pushing several out of the lift. Our was on a hill and they would let the truck roll down the hill to start. The early ones were a matrix or cables but then our elevator got a hydraulic one , really up town then. In a good corn year it was not unusual for some of us to spend the night with trucks in line to unload in the morning.

Farming Pictures From Back Home

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