Harvest Memories....

[samhill]

Harvest

My cousin and me, both 12 years old, running the 2 ton grain trucks, moving augers to the next wooden bin, hotter than Hades, pull rope start B&S that didn't want to start, and hot and muggy, looks like rain coming in, sun disappears, combine plugged, gotta get her dug out, dusty and mosquitoes thick as hair on a dog.

[SASKFARMER3]

This is way back way way back. My brothers and me playing in the field as my parents harvested. We would take some small spoon or knife or what ever was on the truck floor and each time we stopped the harvest truck mom would let us out and we would pretend the straw was trees and each would cut out a area to build their farm on. We were like 7, 4 and 2. Then the old GMC with a foot starter pedal would fill and off to the yard we would go.

Happy times as a kid. Harvest the whole family would always come out on different weeks and help with harvest. Great food and family.

Freezing on a Deere 55, Engine was in the back and you stuck out front. Goggles were a luxury.

[Rareearth]

The lever steering on the ih swather, impossible heat and sun, dust and bugs. The worst was the Kotia green dust that still makes me crawl.

Yes lost at night, tree bluffs, in and out, round and round, which way is town? Where's the trucker? Pulling the lever in the 806 to swing the auger out (it was awesome to have folding augers, many were fixed in place then fixed as the new operators forgot about the poles and trees the need to go backwards around them). Reaching down to pull the lever ( auger swing) when it was the unload auger.

Yes the augers, pull starting them with the belts.
Doors leaking grain.

The light evenings with the full moons, and the cold, windy dark as dark can be cloudy nights.

[SASKFARMER3]

I also remember cutting a hanky to make strips and your jack knife to push between the cracks on the door so it didn't leak.

[SASKFARMER3]

I also remember cutting a hanky to make strips and your jack knife to push between the cracks on the door so it didn't leak.

[redleaf]

No A/C, no heater, no radio, no power steering, brakes may or may not work very well, window may or may not roll down/up, .......

[sofa.king]

Yup those are all good memories because back then it was just normal. Don't think I would want to go back though.

[sumdumguy]

Lots of vivid memories of mom hauling grain late at night with me, the youngest sleeping on the truck seat. It is dark-dark, gotta wakeup to help her back up and oops too far, she backed over the grain auger. The combine fills up but no trucker. The old man comes barrelling to the bin and supremely loses it. Dad bought a farm with junky yard - lots of "fond" memories of that dive.

Crickets churping, school starting but not for me. Its 1964, I spend fall breaking up flax piles with a pitch fork because the wind rolled them into mountains, bigger than the combine. We combined 250 bushels a day with the neighbour's Case combine with a hand clutch feeder house which was a way ahead of its time.

Always, city relatives come out for harvest, best memories of cousins, chopping the heads off with 2 nail logs, the first fall chickens for harvest dill creamed chicken. Our city cousins screaming as the chickens jumped around, sometimes with only one wing.

[MBgrower]

12 years old, trying to move 46' 7" gas auger from one wooden bin to the next in a rutted yard. Using 2x4's as leverage to get the auger tires to roll over the ruts. Really makes me appreciate never having to push pull, or hand cranking an auger anymore.

[danny W1M]

farmaholic et al boys, you sure are bringing up memories. farma, we had a IHC 402 so had a cab on the tractor, which was a great blessing. Except for it not having air conditioning on the hotter days, and trying to keep the dust out. It looked very much like this one, even the pickup not being as wide as the header.
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Those damn B&S pull rope engines, makes a boy into a man PDQ.

My dad put 4" flighting in the back bottom of the old wooden box so mom and us kids could clean out the corners of the truck box as of course they didn't have big swinging doors then, only the gate an' shoot. One side had left-hand flighting, the side had right-hand flighting. Shaft came through the wood on the drives side with a crank to turn. Handle would fold against the box when not in use. Pretty nice idea.

Started swathing around 11 years old with an 18' CCIL pull type swather. Best swather ever, for keeping the corners square(important for pto combines) and NEVER leaving stems standing or partially cut off, in the corners. Left the fields beautifully cut when finished. Dad broke fields open for me, as you had to swath the first round backwards, because often no room between the fence or neighbours. A few years later we got this old IHC(I think) sp swather to open up fields, that steered by pulling levers forward or backward. Was a brut to operate, but better than having to drive through the crop to open fields.