last bale

cut another 15 acres since the weather has been so good here in north MD. Finished up yesterday as the sun was setting. The MF 165 D and dusted off the old Badger round baler from late 1970's. The Badger is really a Vermeer, and those early balers really require dry hay and large windrows or you will find yourself dumping a mangled bale occasionally and starting over. Figured to give the old girl a run, but will continue next cutting with the newer Vermeer Rebel. The Vermeers are good for lower horsepower tractors, and work good for 165's and 265 sized MF tractors. Cheers.

a follow up pic using the Ferguson DEO-20 rake. 3 point rake that uses ground speed PTO. Raking hay is the 2nd best part of haying, "best" is when you are done. Perhaps some folks on this forum have used some of this old iron way back in the day that I am still using and some memories.

The 3 point, pto drive rakes do such a nice job especially if you have a heavy windrow.

Hello Finn,
Nice photos. Plenty of memories from this side of the pond. We had an old Nicholson side delivery rake up to about 1968. It had two large steel rimmed land-drive wheels with a small bogey wheel at the rear. It was a pig of a thing in corners as the tine bars would slow down and leave only a part of a row. It was changed for a Vicon Acrobat which had 4 large star wheels which turned by being dragged over the ground at an angle. Very good to cover the ground but it would leave the rows of hay twisted up like a rope. You could always tell a bale that had been rowed up by an Acrobat as it had to be prised apart. At the time the new Acrobat was ?100. We were given ?25 in part-ex on the Nicholson. Next came the Fahr 6-rotor Centipede to work with the Acrobat. An excellent machine but a pain to fold up and if you were crossing a sloping field in transport it might fall downhill and be 2-3 feet wider than the tractor on the lower side.
For me the best machine that I have ever used was the PZ Haybob. If adjusted correctly it would rarely miss any crop and bales done with it would readily fall apart. It did not cover the ground as well as the Centipede or the Acrobat especially if you were re-rowing hay that had been missed by the baler.
The first baler was a Bamford BL48 followed by a NH 68 then a MF20 and finally a NH 274. It was very satisfying to be able to bale our own hay after years of having a neigbhour do it but even more but even more satisfying when the last bale of the field had come out onto the tailboard and the drive could be dis-engaged......lovely memories.

It has always intrigued me that you guys never got the big engined 165,,,,We only had the 203 engine for the first couple of years production and then we got the 212 engine and finally the 236. this tractor must be post 1970 as it has the cab mounts on the sides of the gearbox?....Nice looking hay!........Sam

Hi Finn, Great photos, a big relief when haymaking is over!
Hi David, We had a Nicholson "Back-kick" PTO driven tedder, I don't remember much about it but it got traded in for a Lely 'Cock Pheasant' which punctured tyres like nothing else you have ever seen. For swathing we had a trailed version of The Vicon Acrobat which had 6 star wheels. It too was on wheelbarrow tyres, ( 3 of them) they went occasionally but not half as bad as those on The Pheasant. It really made a perfect job of raking every wisp of hay but like you say, it did rope it up somewhat. We then bought The Vicon version of The Haybob which was on skis NOT wheels (Yay no more punctures!) I think we went through the alphabet with all the 'small' balers we had over the years, then we changed to A Howard Bigbaler, then a Claas Rollant 62 and finally a JD 550. It will be 20 years this August since I stopped to eject the very last straw bale from our 550...... I remember as it rolled out I just sighed and said to myself, "Well, that's it!" it seemed so very final.