Farm machinery

If we go back to the time of the horse,  a lot of the machinery then was bought from Uncle Jim by Dad,   the wagon,   his horses,  the binder,  grain drill,  all those others things.  Uncle Jim used to do a lot of harvesting.  He used draft horses and the wagon that was here belonged to uncle Jim.

When superphosphate came in,  there was no super spreaders,  the only way we could put the super in was with the grain drill,  which always had a super box,  and Dad put out an enormous amount on this place and on the neighbours.

The drill was a much sought after instrument.    Then there was the horse drawn sickle mowers,  they were a magnificent bit of equipment.   After it was cut,  it had to be ‘dump racked’,   then it was put into wind rows.  Then we went the other way and put it into cocks.   All that was loose hay,  and that had to be pitchforked on to the wagon,  then put into loose stacks.

Later on,  they invented the buck rake.   That done away with all the pitching out in the paddocks,  you could go and pick up the cocks and sweep them in on this buck rake.   That hastened up the carting in for the fellows at the stack,  who always seemed to include myself and Paddy Moyles.   Jack used to be sweeping them in.   We would pitch all day,  and Dad would be up on the stack,  and that was all loose hay.

Also at that time was the oaten hay.    That was a different proposition altogether,   the reaper and binder tied the hay into sheathes and then they had to all be stooked.    To complete the whole thing,   especially carting in,   you wanted a least four or five people.  The fellow on the wagon throwing it off,   another on the stack and if it was a large stack,  he would be pitching to another fella,   and the stack builder always had what we called a sheath turner.  

He had to be highly experienced,  because  all these sheathes had a bevelled end on them,  and at a certain stages of the stacking,  it was always known as knots down or knots up,  when you come to putting on the top of the stack,  the sheathes had to be given to the builder of the stack in a different form altogether.

But nowadays the cost would be prohibitive to have to cart in oat and hay.

People relied enormously on the oaten hay.    When the thrasher arrived,  it had a complement of about twenty five or thirty people on it.  They always came for breakfast so the womenfolk did a number of shifts to feed them.

This was done in the middle of summer.  Dad always recalled back in those days,  it was always well over one hundred (degrees),   which we don’t seem to get nowadays.

You can just imagine the womenfolk feeding twenty or thirty.  Most of them were young and had terrific appetites on them.   That would be breakfast, dinner and tea.    So the amount of food they had when the thrasher was coming was an enormous undertaking.

What they have now is the automatic headers that just go along and strip the crops automatically,   and that goes into the bins of the trucks that’s following.

In those days, the thrasher had to thrash the stacks that had been previously built to get the grain out of it,  for all the various reasons.

The chaffcutters would arrive to cut that hay into chaff for all the horses because   all the farms had heaps of horses,   ponies,  buggy horses,  light horses,  draft horses - you name it.

We had a dozen horses,  a normal team of draft horses was about six.   When they we pulling the big ploughs they’d be about  four abreast,  two in front and two behind.  Those horses  had to be fed three or four times a day.  The last thing at night,  I can remember Dad going out at  nine o’clock at night to feed the horses,  and then at four o’clock next morning to feed them again prior to working them.

In those days,  they seemed to start at daylight and they were very good to their animals.  There was no way they would work them on empty stomachs.  They would sooner go hungry themselves.

Eventually everything improved and the tractors came in   We started off with a little grey Fergi.   How I never killed myself I’ll never know,   because we were ploughing those hillsides there with very little experience.   That was really a highlight.   I often look back,  and thought it was a blessing in disguise because a lot of people weren’t kind to their horses.  They worked them under bad conditions with sore shoulders,  not shod properly,  and they used to belt them.  There was a lot of cruelty in that type of farming.    So thank God,  if they tried to belt into the tractors,  they’d soon find out they were making a darn fool of themselves.                

We started off with 35 horsepower, and so we were able to do more.   So I then started off on the ploughing and cropping again,   and had enormous success,  growing some magnificent crops of  orient oat which was nice thin straw,  magnificently oated and was great feed for the sheep.

The area we cropped was down below in what we now call the cultivation paddock and also Pierces Flats which grew geat crops which would be over your head.   In those days we got three to four ton to the acre,  they were always up around the record.   The beauty of the crops was you could graze them off,    especially by putting the sheep in,  otherwise they would go too rank. 

With so many people required for carting the crops in with all the stoking and such,  the  hay presses then came in.   They improved on them too.  Originally there was the stationary press where two fellas had to sit side by side,   with a complement of about five or six labourers to work those damn things.     

They were a complete failure.   Anyway, it wasn’t long before they got the automatic pickup and tying.   They have some magnificent machines out now  such as the pickup and stackers.  Now of course they’ve gone in for the big rolls equivalent to 20 or 30 of the small square bales that can be carted in on the fork lift and stacked along the fences with electric fences around them.  That has cut down an enormous amount of farm labour.

Jack and I carted in each year about seven or eight thousand bales by hand and   we never had any equipment.   We also stacked them by hand because we never had any equipment.  They were pressed by a contractor because I never had a hay press for quite a long time.   Davey Russell used to be the original contractor. He had an engine operated press which was wire tied.  God they were heavy,   and the wires were so sharp that  they’d cut hell out of your hands.

Then Ray Milton came to light and he pressed here for a long time.   Then eventually, I got an old B45 press which had done a fair amount of work but it was quite successful.    It was good fodder in those days,  practically all clover and rye.   We weren’t afraid to attack those jobs manually but now they’re operating modern equipment such as trucks, automatic pickups and stackers, which has cut down the cost of labour,  and for those operating it,   it’s become a bit of a play now.

I’ve still got two old oat and hay binders over in the shed.   They weren’t complicated.  The knot assembly was patented by one of the Ferriers down here in Winniburn.  The same idea is still in use today in all these modern presses.  With the old binders, you put canvases on them.   There was the platform canvas  and two elevator canvases  and the knives were in front.   There were rakes that knocked the standing crop back onto the canvases after being cut by the knives in front of the platform.  The bottom platform elevated it up until it reached the elevated canvases and then they go up.    There’s a mechanism there that when there is a certain tension on the string,  the hay is separated and creates a sheath.    When it turns and rotates, that activates a tying mechanism, and the knotter ties a knot,  and out comes a beautifully made sheath.

If we went out now and made stookes,  I reckon the cockatoos would just about strip the whole damn thing before we could get it carted in.

I’ve got two of old haybinders – one belonged to the Winninburn Ferriers and the other belonged to Perce Seymour who was a contractor.   It would be only a matter of putting the canvases on,  and going out into the cropping area and away I’d set sail and do what we used to do years ago.

 Brian, Tiny the fox terrier and Ballie 1966 - old binder harvesting

Apart from that, we never overindulged into machinery much,  we only stuck with the basics:  a mower,  an old B45 press,  disc harrows but nothing of extravagance.     It seemed to be adequate for the little amount of acreage that we had.    We had contractors to do the pressing, we seemed to get by without any hassles at all.