Remember the good old days?

Remember when certain farm work was done with a crew? Thrashing was done with a crew. It seemed to take 2 men and a boy around the threshing machine, 2-3 men on bundle wagons and 2-3 men as field pitchers on our farm. I rotated back and forth between filing the oil cups on the thresher to being assistand field pitcher even though I was too small to pitch the bundles to the top of a loaded bundle wagon. Didn't like being around that dirty threshing machine.

Dad bought the first hay baler in the community so many neighbors wanted him to bale for him. He only took jobs for the neighbors that were willing to work on the baling crew. The baler needed a tractor driver, 2 men on the baler and the 4th man riding the hay wagons towed behind the baler. One person hauled the bale wagons back and forth to the yard and 3-4 guys stacked the bales.

I remember there was ample talk, bantering and macho postering among the crew. One had to have a thick hide or play deaf for some of the talk, but a young kid like myself could also learn things as well. When I turned 15, I was as tough as any man on the crew, so I volunteered to ride the wagon and handle those 100 (sometimes +) hand tied wire bales. I thought it was the best job on the whole crew; kept that job all summer long.

I was reading last night an advertisement for the new pick-up baler for 1940. "Fully automatic" only required a four man crew, What we didn't know then didn't hurt us I guess. What I remember about the "good old days" is we weren't so good, and we weren't so old.

Not old enough to remember the thrashing machines in use, but do remember our neighbor coming with a hand tied baler. There was some sort of seat on the baler and the baler had its own engine (Wisconsin?). President external_link was at Toledo a few days ago, made fun of the other party wanting to "go back to the old days", I thought what's wrong with the old days? Things seemed to go better in the black and white tv days.

My Dad was a logger/sawyer owned his own mill. When we were growing up we had no loader, no forklift. Used dozer to skid logs, hole was dug to park truck in, logs rolled on by hand, truck had drop stakes(hinged) that were released to unload at mill. All lumber stacked with stickers to air dry. This was all hardwood 4/4,5/4,8/4,10/4 ect thicknesses. I remember 8/4 oak, 2 boards wide for 48 inch stack, 20-22 inch wide boards. Some trees 5 logs 1700 board feet. Trees 48 inches in diameter, sometimes had to take 8 slabs off log, turning by hand, before 56 inch blade would cut all the way through.
But really needed a big crew when lumber was sold. Tractor trailer load in one day 12,000+ board feet sometimes, all by hand, graded on pile handed on to truck and stacked. At the end of the day when you were tired you were handing up to the top of the load of course.
I didn't think much of it then, but wouldn't change it much now if I could. We learned how to work and a lot of other important values that have served me well throughout my life.

Two big reasons I went to college: pitch fork and scoop shovel. Well, I guess the draft, too. Ended up hobby farming anyway.

I guess it was OK if you owned the equipment but not so great if you were one of the dust eating crew making about 50 cents an hour.Grew up handling about 30 to 40 thousand square hay bales every Summer and it was a real drag only good thing was football practice in late August was a break for me.Round baler and enough equipment to be a one man show is the way I like it these days.I can go BS at the local shop or store on rainy days.

Hot, humid, summer days with temps in the 90's, no breeze. In the loading station of an Allis Chalmers 66 grain harvester. You had two bag openings with a wig wag to change which bag filled. In heavy oats it was all two peple could do to keep the full bags out, tied up, and down the slide, along with having an empty bag in place in time to switch the wig wag.
Add sweat plus chaff from the oats and it was no fun.
But, I would not take anything for those days. I would never want hand outs, live off of the govenment, or expect Uncle Sam to be my keeper because I chose not to take a job making less than what I wanted to make.
According to Clinton, there are over 300,000 unfilled jobs out there that external_link has "created".

Got a freind who is always going on about the good old days. We are the same age, both worked for the same farmers stacking hay, milking and doing field work. To me that was a means for a little beer money, a tank of gas and chasing skirts. If there had been an easier way of making money I would have. But we did work hard for the few dollars we made. He wound up chasing the wrong skirt and my skirt maybe should have tried running a little faster but I've still got her 38 years later.

No they were bad old days but I kinda like the modren stuff. I can get on here and BS. Pop in just about any movie I care to see. Can afford to go on drives without concern over the cost of gas. I own a farm, firearms, equipment and have 10 fantastic grandkids! No I wouldn't trade these days for those.

Rick

Dick2,

I rode on one of those hand-tie, wire balers when I was a kid. One man (or in my case one boy) on one side loading the wires, and another man on the other side tieing the wire ends. Nasty, hot, dirty job, but I didn't mind because I was earning big money - $.50 an hour. That was a whole lot more than $.00 an hour at home.

Tom in TN

yep, and how about those ladys who had to feed those men 4 meals a day to keep them going? they worked as hard as the men in those days, maybe harder

The hardest day that I ever worked in my life was to help my uncle to haul 12" cement blocks for the basement of his new house that he was building himself.

We took the sides off our two trucks and were at the gate 30 miles away when they opened the gate. They loaded the cement blocks on our trucks with a forklift and we drove back to the new house.

I picked up those 12" blocks and threw them on a pile of sand in the middle of the basement and my uncle pulled them off the sand pile and stacked them. We finished the last load at 7:30 p.m. I was so weak I could hardly drive the truck home. Showered and went right to bed, didn't even think about eating.

Man, was I stiff and sore for a few days after that, even though I was in good physical shape.

When someone starts talking to me about the "good old days", I usually tell them: "The only thing old that I like is me!"

That usually kills that topic of converstation.

I was born in 1953. Work was not as hard for me as it was for you older guys, but we still had to work. My Dad was the biggest row crop farmer in the area. He also had cows. My brother and I took care of the cattle during school days and worked on the farm driving tractors, hauling hay, hoeing beans and cotton, packing the cotton in the wagons when we were picking it, etc. As each improvment was made with the new equipment, it improved our quality of life. I have some of those old tractors from that era that do not have cabs, power steering, etc. Makes me thankful for what we have today, but I am thankful I was raised to work. I am not dependent on the government for any of my financial means. When my life ends, I will have did it my way, thanks to my Dad for teaching me to work, how to manage my finances and the good Lord for helping with my business decisions and keeping my health good.

Yep,we always had a crew to fill a 20x40 bunker silo. Now I fill a 30x80 all alone.

My uncle used to chop with an Oliver 88 diesel and a Fox 1 row chopper. Dad hauled. He and one uncle and another uncles brother in law unloaded those old false endgate wagons. Another uncle packed and leveled with a blade on an 8N Ford.
They'd chain 2 tractors together to pull wagons up as high as they could go,then when they couldn't do that anymore,they used an AC table blower to blow it in over one side wall.

Dad always said the only thing good about the good old days was that he was younger.

Early 50s i poked and tied wires on a Case baler for a penny a bale. On a good day that would be $10.00.We were a four man crew. Sadley I am the only one left. I would give a lot to be back there for a day of baleing with them along with a stop at the local gravel pit for a dip on the way home at night to milk .RIP guys it was a good life. W4

Yup, I was thinking about that.

Think its time to feed my man his favorite dinner - roast beef, taters, green beans, gravy.

He's worth it.

Oh yes the "Good ol Days"

Loose hay in the hay mow = hot, dusty,

Milking cows by hand = getting kicked, swatted in the face with a s**ty tail.

Lots of other things, some good, some not.

Don't forget the outhouse, ripe smelling in the summer, colder than hell in the winter, remember the -40 mornings!

Ah yes fall harvest , I could not hardly wait for Saturday and the crack of dawn to head out to my uncles for the tater harvest . My first year i was 7 and had the job of driving the Oliver O C 3 pulling a wagon that they put the bushel baskets on full of potatoes and haul them back to the storage barn. at the time there were only around a 100 acres of spuds . They were dug with a Oliver two row digger and picked up by and army of workers with potato forks and put in bushel
baskets then loaded and stacked four high on the wagon . Then hauled into the storage where men would dump the baskets onto and long elevator and dumped in the storage barn . The empty baskets were placed back on the wagon and i would take them back to the field where someone would jump up on the wagon while i drove slow and he would throw them off to be filled . Then swing around for the next load and back to the barn at a blistering speed of about 3-4 MPH Second gear wide open . at 7 years old i could handle the old OC 3 as well as the men and get the wagon just wright next to the elevator , never lost a basket . a couple years later the farm started to grow with more farms more spuds more people . Then the big change came in the fall of 59 with the addition of new tractors and the first of it's kind 2 row John Bean harvester , no more bushel baskets but self unloading wagons and old Cheve and Dodge trucks . No more army of people with tater forks just five or six people on the harvester one or two tractors for the harvester depending on field conditions and a extra tow tractor for the trucks or wagons , instead of six to eight people at the storage to unload now there was only two plus the driver. My uncle and the one neighbor worked together at everything and shared everything . Then in 1962 The neighbor bought the first new generation Deere a 4010 only to find out that it was not much more then my uncles 560 as it could not handle the harvester any better then the 560 could Because when it started to lug down ya had to stop to change gears and the truck or tractor along side loading sometimes would not stop as fast and ya had taters on the ground where as with the 560 ya just pulled the T/A and kept moving . In 1963 we had the 806 and now we had a tractor that had the power and weight to pull the harvester with out and extra tow tractor for the hills and some of the soft spots . But always kept either the D4 or the OC 6 close by .

The posting is not about me, nor the new hat, but of the picture on the wall. Married 43 years today, Wife is gone to a meeting. We will party later. I drove a team when I was about 9 picking up bundles.

Congratulations to you and your wife and the two of you have a wonderful day. My wife and I had our 43 a month ago ( how time flies by).

1958 was a dark year for dairy- milk price completely collapsed. Dad couldn't afford alfalfa at $35 a ton, so he got a Case hand-tie baler, and we put up hay. He shoved the needles (and tried to cope with that *%&$ Wisconsin engine), I tied (age 10), cousin (13) drove the tractor, another cousin (13) pushed the hay in with a pitchfork when the anemic feeding system didn't work. My mother thought it was child abuse, I thought it was great. I got to drive the truck picking up bales, because I was too little to buck them.

Of course, it was a pretty slow operation, so took all summer, and toward the end, we were putting up some pretty sorry stuff. Milk production fell off the cliff, of course, and 2 years later we were broke.

I can relate to the large crews. I was fairly young, and didn't get in on the action much. I did have the job of poking wires one time, on a stationary baler, to the guy on the other side to tie the wire. Every now and then I would poke the wire on the wrong side of the bale divider, and tie the divider to the bale. This didn't make the crew very happy, as they would have to stop and untie the divider. Treshing beans was also a very crew I would guess close to 12 or more men to operate the starionary tresher. I can remember playing in the beans as they came from the tresher, and dumped into the truck. Hard to believe most of those men are gone now. Stan

(quoted from post at 05:42:42 09/06/12) According to Clinton, there are over 300,000 unfilled jobs out there that external_link has "created".

Click to expand...

Yeah, but they're all in China.

The summer I was 16 (1959) I worked on a farm. We were putting up hay and my job was up in the hot dusty mow taking bales off the elevator walking to the other end of the mow and stacking. The farmers job was putting bales on the bottom of the elevator. He could put them on the elevator faster than I could keep up. I yelled down to the farmer "slow down". The elevator was making so much noise that he could not hear me. I finally let a bale go down the backside of the elevator. The farmer yelled up "am I going too fast"? Oh the good old days.