The farmer aged but the combine didn’t. 🙂
My father-in-law farmed with horses until 1946. Before he passed I took him out to his nephew’s farm where he was harvesting with 3 of those $450K combines. He kept kicking the ground and say’in ‘who would have ever thought?’. He did not take his grain to the elevator in semi trucks. He took it in a wagon and hand shoveled.
So many of the values those times taught are now gone. I can only hope that my spoilt generation will leave something for the grand children.
Thanks for this Charlie.
Other than a few scrapes here and there, a smashed toe, through a guardian angel,I managed to get through about 35 years of farming injury free. Not that I didn’t do some stupid stuff that I got away with. Although I did discover that guys over sixty should not jump off a combine or a truck box as I managed to crack a vertebrae in two places. Doc was pe’od as he said I can’t get you in for a fusing operation until you are crawling around on your hands and knees. Well, the cracks fused on their own without the help of the Soviet medical system.
I still miss many aspects of farming and stop and watch the guys seeding and harvesting and go out at night just to see the combine lights and listen to the sounds.
Many great memories. Although I do not miss the seeding and harvest tensions, lack of sleeps, and the frosts and hail storms.
Nice music and well sung, but I would prefer that all the chaps making the music be helping with the harvest instead.
Once a farmer, always a farmer. (at heart)
Our combine didn’t have lights. Driving combine in 1958
Very well done video and she’s not hard on the eyes either. City folks would probably have a hard time relating to that “original” tail gate party because it involves real life instead of booze and boom boxes. All their groceries appear magically on store shelves and farmers are just a bunch of gun toting rednecks that raise dust and kill the planet by using huge amounts of fossil fuels. That is a actual statement I overheard from a UBC student a few years ago and not one person in a group of about a dozen students said anything to correct her. As I was a mere guest I politely told her she was nuts and there was mental help for any that agreed with her. The looks I received told me I was no longer welcome so I left. Apparently I had set off some trigger warnings. I doubt if Vancouver was any different than the mindset in Toronto. How city folks get so detached from reality is hard for me to comprehend but I know we are in a dire need of a reset. Just too many nuts that will breed more nuts in the future.
That’s because too many city folk think of “gardening” as picking up a few annuals from the greenhouse and sticking them in pots and planters. No growing anything real – and that’s if they actually have a garden area. Even seeing artificial turf popping up in yards.
Back in the day, my Granny always had a flower and veggie garden back of her house. Veggies were okay, but she really, really loved dahlias and her flowers were great. There was an old prune plum tree as well, which she would harvest (climbing up a ladder). We were small town folk, and – along with most of the town – had a garden. So I knew where food came from. Every September, it was Harvest Thanksgiving at our church, and we decorated it with produce from the garden. Have also seen churches where sheaves of grain are brought it as well to remind us all of God’s goodness and bounty towards us.
Even as city folk, we made certain the offsprings grew up knowing where their food came from. At the local agricultural fair, when we would go down to see the exhibits, I would ask the exhibitors if we were looking at hamburger or ice cream on the hoof. Our yard’s too shady for veggies now – wasn’t back in the day – and I still miss the early beet greens and the fresh peas.
“Our combine didn’t have lights”
When I was just a young guy, my father’s combine was a Minneapolis-Moline “pull-type” which meant it was pulled by a tractor. Unlike later pull-type models, it was not powered by a PTO on the tractor but had its own engine which meant that the operator had to monitor the tractor engine and the combine engine. It had no unloading auger but rather a chute which was lowered to allow the grain to flow into a truck.
Basically it was one step above a threshing machine but it got the job done.
You must be an old feller like me! As a kid I got to ride along the binder, and boy, was threshing day a big event. Lots of pie and riding on the hayricks hauling sheaves.
Actually it was a few years after binders and hauling sheaves. The old man was trying to eke out a living by renting a section and a half and there wasn’t enough money for a fancy new self-propelled combine. Hell, his tractor didn’t even have a cab.
We had a pull type, power take off driven combine before the self-propelled one.
Like this one. Allis Chalmers Pull Type Combine
One of our sons was headhunted to go over and help with the maintenance of gear like this.
But now in limbo due to happenings in Alberta.
I love it! Excellent article. You touched on a topical issue. I would appreciate if you’d written about how to merge some files online. I know a good online service I used before. I mostly use AltoMerge to merge PDF files. You can easily merge your documents here ALTO-Merge
My past.
http://www.pbase.com/djstefanik/a_year_in_farming
The farmer aged but the combine didn’t. 🙂
My father-in-law farmed with horses until 1946. Before he passed I took him out to his nephew’s farm where he was harvesting with 3 of those $450K combines. He kept kicking the ground and say’in ‘who would have ever thought?’. He did not take his grain to the elevator in semi trucks. He took it in a wagon and hand shoveled.
So many of the values those times taught are now gone. I can only hope that my spoilt generation will leave something for the grand children.
Thanks for this Charlie.
Other than a few scrapes here and there, a smashed toe, through a guardian angel,I managed to get through about 35 years of farming injury free. Not that I didn’t do some stupid stuff that I got away with. Although I did discover that guys over sixty should not jump off a combine or a truck box as I managed to crack a vertebrae in two places. Doc was pe’od as he said I can’t get you in for a fusing operation until you are crawling around on your hands and knees. Well, the cracks fused on their own without the help of the Soviet medical system.
I still miss many aspects of farming and stop and watch the guys seeding and harvesting and go out at night just to see the combine lights and listen to the sounds.
Many great memories. Although I do not miss the seeding and harvest tensions, lack of sleeps, and the frosts and hail storms.
Nice music and well sung, but I would prefer that all the chaps making the music be helping with the harvest instead.
sorry ,too busy pulling dragons from the ground , we have timeline too.
http://countrydirt.blogspot.ca/2011/05/corb-lund-pullin-dragons-from-ground.html
Once a farmer, always a farmer. (at heart)
Our combine didn’t have lights.
Driving combine in 1958
Very well done video and she’s not hard on the eyes either. City folks would probably have a hard time relating to that “original” tail gate party because it involves real life instead of booze and boom boxes. All their groceries appear magically on store shelves and farmers are just a bunch of gun toting rednecks that raise dust and kill the planet by using huge amounts of fossil fuels. That is a actual statement I overheard from a UBC student a few years ago and not one person in a group of about a dozen students said anything to correct her. As I was a mere guest I politely told her she was nuts and there was mental help for any that agreed with her. The looks I received told me I was no longer welcome so I left. Apparently I had set off some trigger warnings. I doubt if Vancouver was any different than the mindset in Toronto. How city folks get so detached from reality is hard for me to comprehend but I know we are in a dire need of a reset. Just too many nuts that will breed more nuts in the future.
That’s because too many city folk think of “gardening” as picking up a few annuals from the greenhouse and sticking them in pots and planters. No growing anything real – and that’s if they actually have a garden area. Even seeing artificial turf popping up in yards.
Back in the day, my Granny always had a flower and veggie garden back of her house. Veggies were okay, but she really, really loved dahlias and her flowers were great. There was an old prune plum tree as well, which she would harvest (climbing up a ladder). We were small town folk, and – along with most of the town – had a garden. So I knew where food came from. Every September, it was Harvest Thanksgiving at our church, and we decorated it with produce from the garden. Have also seen churches where sheaves of grain are brought it as well to remind us all of God’s goodness and bounty towards us.
Even as city folk, we made certain the offsprings grew up knowing where their food came from. At the local agricultural fair, when we would go down to see the exhibits, I would ask the exhibitors if we were looking at hamburger or ice cream on the hoof. Our yard’s too shady for veggies now – wasn’t back in the day – and I still miss the early beet greens and the fresh peas.
“Our combine didn’t have lights”
When I was just a young guy, my father’s combine was a Minneapolis-Moline “pull-type” which meant it was pulled by a tractor. Unlike later pull-type models, it was not powered by a PTO on the tractor but had its own engine which meant that the operator had to monitor the tractor engine and the combine engine. It had no unloading auger but rather a chute which was lowered to allow the grain to flow into a truck.
Basically it was one step above a threshing machine but it got the job done.
You must be an old feller like me! As a kid I got to ride along the binder, and boy, was threshing day a big event. Lots of pie and riding on the hayricks hauling sheaves.
Actually it was a few years after binders and hauling sheaves. The old man was trying to eke out a living by renting a section and a half and there wasn’t enough money for a fancy new self-propelled combine. Hell, his tractor didn’t even have a cab.
We had a pull type, power take off driven combine before the self-propelled one.
Like this one. Allis Chalmers Pull Type Combine
One of our sons was headhunted to go over and help with the maintenance of gear like this.
But now in limbo due to happenings in Alberta.
I love it! Excellent article. You touched on a topical issue. I would appreciate if you’d written about how to merge some files online. I know a good online service I used before. I mostly use AltoMerge to merge PDF files. You can easily merge your documents here ALTO-Merge