Some more palaver: The Farmall didn't change farming alone, but it set a model for other companies who imitated the basic idea. Some tractors were built in a similar manner ("cranked" rear axle, wheels bolted to a flange at the end of the axle), while in time, others came up with improvements (the Oliver Row-Crop, about 1930, with BIG wheels that could be slid in and out on the axles for different row widths, and the F-12, 1932, which also used sliding wheels). IHC and other companies produced all kinds of machines that could be used with or mounted on the tractor. An illustration of what I was saying about the change in labor requirements. When I was very young, in the late 30s and early 40s, my father and his siblings each farmed about 150 acres. In order to harvest the wheat on one of those farms, each of the brothers and their hired men (usually, one per farm), AND their kids, too, gathered at each farm in turn. They each brought one tractor and one flatbed truck. The thresher was owned by all four of them, and was pulled from farm to farm when needed. One of the tractors on the farm operated the thresher on the belt (they had 10-20s or F-20s for this). In order to feed the monster, all the trucks and wagons were kept moving constantly. Each of the trucks or tractor/wagon combination required a driver, somebody on the load to stack the wheat sheaves, probably two people on the ground with pitchforks to break down the stacks and fork the sheaves up on the wagon or truck. At the thresher, you needed somebody to pitch the sheaves up from the truck, one person to feed the sheaves into the thresher, and at least one person on the ground to put bags on the thesher and move and tie up the full bags (this happened pretty fast when the thesher was fed properly). All in all, I'd say a typical threshing crew was about 8 or 9 adults, plus several kids old enough to help (drive a wagon, tie grain bags). The wives of these people also came to cook up a delicious country dinner (roast beef and gravy, mashed potatoes, wonderful pies). The meals were real "fun fests," with everybody telling jokes or gossip about locals (who weren't there, obviously). Well, about 1943, one of the men in this extended family bought a small combine and then did all four of the farms. Only two people were required to operate this rig, and that only because it had a bagging platform instead of a tank. The bags were slid off onto the ground and picked up either later, or simultaneously by someone who wasn't operating the combine. If the weather cooperated, it would have been possible to do all of this with just two operators, assuming that the bags would be picked up and carted to the barn after the combine was shut down for the day. The same kind of cooperative family arrangement was true of silo filling--big crew, trucks and tractors and wagons, lots of hand labor. When the field-chopper became popular sometime in the forties, only a handful of people could fill the silo. And then there is the corn (ears) harvest, which became a one- or two-person operation after the cornpicker became common (middle forties where I lived).
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Today's Featured Article - Choosin, Mounting and Using a Bush Hog Type Mower - by Francis Robinson. Looking around at my new neighbors, most of whom are city raised and have recently acquired their first mini-farms of five to fifteen acres and also from reading questions ask at various discussion sites on the web it is frighteningly apparent that a great many guys (and a few gals) are learning by trial and error and mostly error how to use a very dangerous piece of farm equipment. It is also very apparent that these folks are getting a lot of very poor and often very dangerous advice fro
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