Making Hay like Fifties

Some pictures of son cutting Alfalfa with 1956 JD model 50 pulling a JD 1209 Swather-Crimper. Alfalfa was seeded last August after burning down Bermuda. No rain for three month so had to irrrigate. No irrigation this spring. Will bale, spray for grassy weeds, apply fougure(sp) Ferilizer per soil tests and start watering after baling. Was surprised at yield. One hundred twenty, 60-65 lbs bales per acre. Expect at least three cuttings here in Oklahoma.
gitrib

<a href="http://s323.photobucket.com/albums/nn472/gitrib/?action=view&current=PIC-0325.jpg" target="_blank"> </a>
<a href="http://s323.photobucket.com/albums/nn472/gitrib/?action=view&current=PIC-0323.jpg" target="_blank"></a>
<a href="http://s323.photobucket.com/albums/nn472/gitrib/?action=view&current=PIC-0324.jpg" target="_blank"></a>

I'm not disputing your word that this is the way Hay was done in Ok.in the fifties but it sure wasn't done this way in ILL. in the fifties. Dad had me or some one else cut the hay with a 8n ford with a 7' sickle mower,raked it into windrows with either a Oliver or AC side delivery rake, when ready he chopped it with a fox chopper powered with our MM U which had a manual slip Clutch on the PTO,Hay was blown into wagons with a winch back front and blown into the barn with an fox apron blower. Hard ,hot dirty work for a mostly teenaged kid digging that hay out of the back of those old preself unloading wagons. He never Irrigated nor fertilized hay fields. Lime ,phosphate and crop rotation along with dairy herd manure is all any field on the farm received in the fifties.2 cuttings was average and if the field was slated for corn next year maybe a third cutting would be taken off it.Corn, oats then Hay was the crop rotation used then.

Things do change from different areas, and states. In the early 50's dad would cut his oat hay, rake it into rows, and bunch the rows into small piles(shocks) then dress up the shocks by hand. When the hay was ready to bale, he would gather the shocks together with his buck rake mounted on his F12, to the stationary baler. That all changed in the late 50's when he would burrow the neighbors New Holland pick up baler. Stan

We are still using a Fox Apron blower to fill 60ft. upright silo. No one can believe it still works.

Very true- moco"s weren"t invented until at least the late 60s, and not real popular until the 70s. Pretty crude early machines.

Pretty fancy rig for our 50's farm!Never has a crimper as we had no tractors with hydraulics! We mowed with a JD "A" pulling a New Idea trailing mower. Then raked with a Farmall "B" pulling a New Idea side delivery rake converted from horse drawn. When it was finally dry in a couple days if it didn't rain we baled it with the "A" pulling a New Holland 66 and loaded the bales by hand onto a rack my dad had built. Towed it to the barn with the "B". Pulled it into the mow with a block and tackle hooked to the "B". Unloaded it with a hayfork ten bales at a time. Pulled it out with the "B" again, hooked back on to the tounge and back to the field! Makes me hot and sweaty just thinking about it!And by local standards Dad was a VERY modern farmer!!

My Dad bought one of the first mower-conditioners sold in our county in the late 60s or early 70s; my recollection is that it was a 1209, but maybe not.......it's been a long time. What REALLY impressed me was the equalizing hitch, which allowed a sharper turn without the u-joints hammering.

Sorry I did not mean to mislead anyone. Son is making hay this year with equpment from the 50'sHe has rebuilt it so it works.

gitrib

a 50s built tractor with a 80s built hay tool............

Where are you located in Okla. We will be visiting around the 4th of July.

There's nothing prettier than a field of 1/10 bloom alfalfa ready to cut, and nothing smells better than that field a day later.

We always used a clover/timothy mix back in the day, and I suppose it was better for the work horses and milk cows, but I love alfalfa hay.

Thanks for the neat pictures!!

Stan
(Formerly from central Indiana)

I had a new holland 460 haybind that was made in 1964 I'm pretty sure.No I didn't buy it back then, I bought it about 10 years ago. did a bunch of work to it and ran perfect right up to me selling it last year. Not alot of haybines around in the 60's back then it was sickle bar and pull behind crimper, or no crimper, just take a day more to dry hay. Remember 3 cuttings off a couple of fields, that were the ones we green chopped for the cows.
Nothing like the smell of fresh cut alalfa

I still remember pulling chopped hay out of a silage box for a neighbor. Box had canvas on the floor and we used a small electric gearmotor to drive it. We ran the belt driven blower with an F-12 Farmall, used a Super M on the chopper and pulled wagons with an H. What a nasty dirty job. Most guys just mowed, raked, and baled loading wagons in the field behind the baler. Quite a few had elevators to help filling the mow. It was still a lot of hot, dusty work. Loading the wagon was the only relatively easy job in the whole process.
Paul
Paul

Nice pictures!! Thanks for posting them!! charles

Summer of '59 we put up a bunch of "local" hay (dad couldn't afford alfalfa that year, after the disastrous milk prices in '58) with a Dearborn sickle bar mower on an 8N Ford, then tag-along side delivery rake, then baled with a Case hand-tie baler. Cousin Fred drove the 8N, Dad "shoved the needle"- double channel units that were pushed through the bale with a spring-assisted handle, then wires threaded through. I tied the bales, riding on a seat right behind the hay pickup on right hand side. Cousin Jim walked along with a pitchfork to push hay into the chamber if the going got heavy, because all it had was a wide belt to carry hay in, no auger or fingers. I was 10, cousins were about 12 and 13. I drove the truck (International one ton, about '45 vintage) in the hayfield, because I was too little to buck bales. Many thousands of bales, went well into August, and the hay was pretty much straw by then. That was the beginning of the end for the dairy operation- hay was so poor the cows all but dried up that winter, and they got sold in the summer of '61. In retrospect, Dad said "I always wanted to farm in the worst way, and I expect we pretty much did."