I've been making hay a long time now. This video is of 8mm movie film taken by my late father Raymond Burkill (1922-2011) With the last segment filmed by my mother Neita Burkill.
Hi from Wales UK,your video brings back memories of me balling at 9 years old on a fordson major with a salopian baler hell of a noisy machine, I was so small I couldn't reach the clutch pedal or the brakes,so would sit on the gearbox,dad told me to keep the front wheel next to the windrow, going in the slowest gear possible, my brother who was 4 years older would be stacking bales on a trailer while my father threw the bales up with a pitchfork mum driving the tractor,there were no health and safety rules in them days,we all had a job to do and got on with it,that was in 1965,talk about global warming,we had 6 weeks of hot weather ,by the end of those 6 weeks we'd have got around 10 to 12 thousand hay bales in,rushing to get the last one in before thunder stoms, every year the same,as I got older I'd still be the one balling, I'm 67 now still at it,but slightly newer machinery it's been a hard way of life but wouldn't change any of it ,my hearing not very good ,but still quite fit,all the best to all hard working farmers all over the world.
I left school in 1960 and went to work on a large dairy farm, I'd already driven a grey Ferguson on my uncles farm. So was put right to work driving an old Fordson petrol start paraffin run tractor mucking out cow barns. Hay making was much the same as in the video, a newer model Fordson Major turned the hay and a Ferguson 165 pulled the Massey Ferguson baler. Bale loading was done by hand though a lift was used in the barns, student teachers were used on daily hire. I stuck it for 9 months then went to work constructing rail tunnel and spent the rest of my working life working worldwide on tunnels of all kinds. I now grow bananas and other fruits in Vietnam Thanks for posting and reminding me of those times.
Enjoyed this video.I was born in 1959,lived next door to an old German farmer.They had a similar combine with an old Wisconsin crank start engine.I remember them using that thing pulled it with a farmall M.Father & son team.They"d cuss and swear at each other all day long.That family had big bucks but you"d never know it.Very hard working people.I alway"s heard that those "Wisconsins" were the toughest engines ever made.
Im about 10 years younger, but we still did it this way. On the hottest days of the year of course! Short straw drawn got you in the even hotter barn to stack.
My dad and uncle shared the same exact baler. I can still hear the governor on every plunger stroke. Great baler but heavy bales for a 8-10 year old boy. Wow what a memory.
Thanks for bringing back memories. All of our balers had the bales coming out the back, don’t know what the JD engineers were thinking when they designed that hay baler.
Great to see this mate , it reminds me of my childhood , i drove a TED 20 with Ferguson rear mounted finger bar mower on mowing our hay for my late dad every summer , started when I was just 8 ! , in a good day I could do about 8 acres on ridge & furrow ground , lots & lots of lifting , turning round & running again , a sharp knife , & sufficient knife speed relative to ground speed made the job possible in heavy grass , the fergie engine would stand some revs , but that used to shake the mower to bits , so you had to find it,s efficiency critical , not so bad for an 8 year old kid , that old tractor became my best mate , I spent so much time with it , still got it . I,m an old bloke now , & still bloody idiot enough to be in the job , when we all pack up & die out , civil war follows , lots & lots of useless bloody politicians , & no food in the supermarket , because we know more about the characteristics of old tractors than we do about women , spent vastly more time with them , watch the Australian film about the shearing gang in the 1950,s , starring Jack Thompson , & listen to " Old Garth " , his character had spent more time shearing sheep than he had with his wife , & said so , we are the real life " Old Garth,s " , except Old Garth was an alcoholic , could only shear sheep when drunk ! Great Blokes though .
Nice video my folks had a dairy farm in northern wash state🇺🇸 we had over the years Farmall A super A and Farmall 100 all these tractors used a sickle bar mower .we were a one tractor farm 40 acres and a T 20 baler with 1 wheel in front and a Farmall A or cub engine ran that .Then we moved to a second dairy farm and my Dad added a T20 Ferguson gas with 3 point to pull wagons or baler or manure spreader.farm got sold everything .Years later I bought 7 aces and found a 1956 or? T20 that is used with a brush hog .p.s. yes remember ALL the summers haying 🤔🇺🇸😇 thank you for this great video.🎩
Thanks for sharing these precious memories from so long ago. Lovely to see, and by uploading them to the internet you have immortalised your father and all who helped!
I was 8 years old and we had a Fergie about the same size. My Dad taught me how to drive it sitting in his lap and then little by little, I became a hand. During corn harvest, I drove the Fergie pulling a cottonwood trailer that field hands picked and tossed into the trailer. All-day long, putting along. I remember being so surprised by the highway that bordered our field- just suddenly, there it was and I had to grab the throttle lock and put-in the clutch and slow the rig and turn it for the next rows. My Dad would walk along picking up corn just like any field hand. Man, I used to go to bed with that drumming engine in my head. 4 days and the job was done- then came shelling. Ugh- farm work was so tedious. I would be all glad though when Dad would say, "You're not going to school next week...harvest." I'd have to double up studies and the teacher would give me all sorts of work to do, too. Then Dad would make me figure seed loads and acreage, corn yields, fertilizer spread, etc. So, I was pretty good at math. He lost the farm to low prices in the mid 50's.
I was making hay in 1961 too. Taller hay, Better tractor and mower, Another lesser tractor raked up 2 swaths together and then the mowing tractor pulled a better wire tie baler. The mowing tractor was a VAC Case from 1950, the mower a Case 310, We had no need to stop and reverse at the corners, I just cranked the wheel, stomped the right brake and went on the way leaving no uncut corners. The raking was done with a puny 9N '53 Ford tractor with a pto powered Ford side delivery rake. Baling was done was done with the Case pulling a late 40's New Holland model 80 wire tie baler also powered by a Wisconsin V4 engine. Bales weighed 95-105 lb in the field and wires so tight U couldn't get yer fingers under them. We bucked hay using hooks onto wagons pulled behind the 9N ford and stacked 400 ton of prime alfalfa a year using a '58 Ford 960 tractor with a hydraulic elevator mounted om the rear axle housing. I told Dad in 1965 when he wanted me to partner in farming with him...."Hell NO! too much work for too little pay"
Amazing how little farming has changed since then! My mowing tractor is still a c1961 Massey Ferguson 35 with an old NH Sickle bar mower. Thanks for sharing!
Oh that takes me back! In the uk, finger-bar mowers were replaced by drum mowers or "flyin saucers " in the 70s .We never had the luxury of an elevator tho! All thrown up by hand.
You started young in those days, operating that sickle bar mower like a pro. Never seen a baler like that before. I grew up with IH machines here in New Zealand in the 1960s. Great old film footage of the past.
That baler is a John Deere 116W. We had one like it. Yours was newer than ours because of the strippers that's on the pickup. If those Needles are positioned right and the timing is right it never misses a bale. If I remember right ours was a 1948 model. Yours was made after 1952. It was considered the best baler on the market at that time. The biggest problem with it, is everything had to be in time. Even the feeder had to be in time. The Wisconsin engine could be a bitch to start sometimes. One of the biggest problems is the whole thing had chains to drive the various parts. The pickup, the middle feeder, the feeder that shoved the hay in the bale chamber and the needles were all driven by chains the only thing not drive by a chain is the plunger head and every thing timed to it. Chains wear out and as a result you lose your time. It would go a 100,000 bales and not miss one. We baled over a million bales with ours and they weighed a average of 110 pounds. Thanks for sharing.
Agree that Wisconsin engine was hard to start when it was hot. Standard operating procedure was to start it and not turn it off until you were done with it for the day.
Great video. We had nh super 77 with a v4 motor. It had electric start. The bale loader is really cool. Never saw a powered one. The ones I've seen are ground driven.
I just mowed hay with my 48 H Farmall and IHC simi mount mower. Raked it with my dads (then) mine now JD steel wheel rake. Never saw a bale pickup like that. Would have been handy
I was 6 years old then not old enough to drive the tractor, but chased the millions of grasshoppers, all different colors and sizes, and garter snakes, frogs, toads, mice, birds nests, that existed then. Some hoppers were big as your hand 2 1/2". There were thousands of praying mantis, walking stick bugs 3" long, spittle bugs, flying squirrels, bobcats, deer, badgers, weasels. Seems like only a few days, or seconds have gone by? At other times; it's like a million years have slipped away. What the heck happened in between? We are but stardust in the expanding universe it seems. All the wonderful people we all knew disappeared like a puff of smoke. The world was still so full of hope, and optimism then. Not so much anymore? People even in rural areas had (common sense), and could read, and write well, think outside their small rural world with their imagination. Today, they are often brain dead from TV, radical talk radio poison, and (not very smart phone filth); many times; not always.. Don't even mention the drugs, booze, meth, fentanyl. Horrendous tragedy. It was a more respectful more optimistic attitude even with all the worlds problems. We thought we could fix it. No time to be pessimistic, or feel sorry for ourselves. Get studying! Get to work! That's the answer. Thanks for the beautiful memory. So precious.
@@batcoifgaming7815 Interestingly we never had a problem with wheel or bearing failure in the 15 years of service. That baler did a lot of work as dad contract baled for several neighbouring dairy farmers. Pretty sure somewhere I have a new spare plunger arm that was never required.....
Ox..., at 8, I was driving the ferguson, pulling the McCormick bailer(with Wisconsin engine), while dad was on the wagon stacking... he sure was a long ways back... I lost one cat...
Hi from Wales UK,your video brings back memories of me balling at 9 years old on a fordson major with a salopian baler hell of a noisy machine, I was so small I couldn't reach the clutch pedal or the brakes,so would sit on the gearbox,dad told me to keep the front wheel next to the windrow, going in the slowest gear possible, my brother who was 4 years older would be stacking bales on a trailer while my father threw the bales up with a pitchfork mum driving the tractor,there were no health and safety rules in them days,we all had a job to do and got on with it,that was in 1965,talk about global warming,we had 6 weeks of hot weather ,by the end of those 6 weeks we'd have got around 10 to 12 thousand hay bales in,rushing to get the last one in before thunder stoms, every year the same,as I got older I'd still be the one balling, I'm 67 now still at it,but slightly newer machinery it's been a hard way of life but wouldn't change any of it ,my hearing not very good ,but still quite fit,all the best to all hard working farmers all over the world.
I left school in 1960 and went to work on a large dairy farm, I'd already driven a grey Ferguson on my uncles farm. So was put right to work driving an old Fordson petrol start paraffin run tractor mucking out cow barns.
Hay making was much the same as in the video, a newer model Fordson Major turned the hay and a Ferguson 165 pulled the Massey Ferguson baler. Bale loading was done by hand though a lift was used in the barns, student teachers were used on daily hire.
I stuck it for 9 months then went to work constructing rail tunnel and spent the rest of my working life working worldwide on tunnels of all kinds.
I now grow bananas and other fruits in Vietnam
Thanks for posting and reminding me of those times.
Enjoyed this video.I was born in 1959,lived next door to an old German farmer.They had a similar combine with an old Wisconsin crank start engine.I remember them using that thing pulled it with a farmall M.Father & son team.They"d cuss and swear at each other all day long.That family had big bucks but you"d never know it.Very hard working people.I alway"s heard that those "Wisconsins" were the toughest engines ever made.
Im about 10 years younger, but we still did it this way. On the hottest days of the year of course! Short straw drawn got you in the even hotter barn to stack.
My dad and uncle shared the same exact baler. I can still hear the governor on every plunger stroke. Great baler but heavy bales for a 8-10 year old boy. Wow what a memory.
Thanks for the video. I thought I knew every kind of small square baler. This was one of the more unusual designs.
Thanks for bringing back memories. All of our balers had the bales coming out the back, don’t know what the JD engineers were thinking when they designed that hay baler.
That's easy, so you could load a truck driving along side.
Yes...Thanks for sharing these precious memories ...nice group of people...
Great to see this mate , it reminds me of my childhood , i drove a TED 20 with Ferguson rear mounted finger bar mower on mowing our hay for my late dad every summer , started when I was just 8 ! , in a good day I could do about 8 acres on ridge & furrow ground , lots & lots of lifting , turning round & running again , a sharp knife , & sufficient knife speed relative to ground speed made the job possible in heavy grass , the fergie engine would stand some revs , but that used to shake the mower to bits , so you had to find it,s efficiency critical , not so bad for an 8 year old kid , that old tractor became my best mate , I spent so much time with it , still got it . I,m an old bloke now , & still bloody idiot enough to be in the job , when we all pack up & die out , civil war follows , lots & lots of useless bloody politicians , & no food in the supermarket , because we know more about the characteristics of old tractors than we do about women , spent vastly more time with them , watch the Australian film about the shearing gang in the 1950,s , starring Jack Thompson , & listen to " Old Garth " , his character had spent more time shearing sheep than he had with his wife , & said so , we are the real life " Old Garth,s " , except Old Garth was an alcoholic , could only shear sheep when drunk ! Great Blokes though .
A year before I was born... when this country was truly great
Nice video my folks had a dairy farm in northern wash state🇺🇸 we had over the years Farmall A super A and Farmall 100 all these tractors used a sickle bar mower .we were a one tractor farm 40 acres and a T 20 baler with 1 wheel in front and a Farmall A or cub engine ran that .Then we moved to a second dairy farm and my Dad added a T20 Ferguson gas with 3 point to pull wagons or baler or manure spreader.farm got sold everything .Years later I bought 7 aces and found a 1956 or? T20 that is used with a brush hog .p.s. yes remember ALL the summers haying 🤔🇺🇸😇 thank you for this great video.🎩
Awesome memories. I was born when you turned 11. My childhood journey was very similar to yours ... good foundations for growing boys ...
Thanks for sharing these precious memories from so long ago. Lovely to see, and by uploading them to the internet you have immortalised your father and all who helped!
Great video, I think that the old ways were sometimes better than how it's done today.
I was 8 years old and we had a Fergie about the same size. My Dad taught me how to drive it sitting in his lap and then little by little, I became a hand. During corn harvest, I drove the Fergie pulling a cottonwood trailer that field hands picked and tossed into the trailer. All-day long, putting along. I remember being so surprised by the highway that bordered our field- just suddenly, there it was and I had to grab the throttle lock and put-in the clutch and slow the rig and turn it for the next rows. My Dad would walk along picking up corn just like any field hand. Man, I used to go to bed with that drumming engine in my head. 4 days and the job was done- then came shelling. Ugh- farm work was so tedious. I would be all glad though when Dad would say, "You're not going to school next week...harvest." I'd have to double up studies and the teacher would give me all sorts of work to do, too. Then Dad would make me figure seed loads and acreage, corn yields, fertilizer spread, etc. So, I was pretty good at math. He lost the farm to low prices in the mid 50's.
Sir that video brings tear’s of joy to my eyes it is by far the most authentic one yet for me thank you sir
I was making hay in 1961 too. Taller hay, Better tractor and mower, Another lesser tractor raked up 2 swaths together and then the mowing tractor pulled a better wire tie baler. The mowing tractor was a VAC Case from 1950, the mower a Case 310, We had no need to stop and reverse at the corners, I just cranked the wheel, stomped the right brake and went on the way leaving no uncut corners. The raking was done with a puny 9N '53 Ford tractor with a pto powered Ford side delivery rake. Baling was done was done with the Case pulling a late 40's New Holland model 80 wire tie baler also powered by a Wisconsin V4 engine. Bales weighed 95-105 lb in the field and wires so tight U couldn't get yer fingers under them. We bucked hay using hooks onto wagons pulled behind the 9N ford and stacked 400 ton of prime alfalfa a year using a '58 Ford 960 tractor with a hydraulic elevator mounted om the rear axle housing. I told Dad in 1965 when he wanted me to partner in farming with him...."Hell NO! too much work for too little pay"
Grandpa had the same baler back in the day. The legend of the old side winder lives on to this day even though that baler is long gone.
I actually know where one is sitting in a paddock not far away from me.....
The elevator beside the truck , what a back saver .
Amazing how little farming has changed since then! My mowing tractor is still a c1961 Massey Ferguson 35 with an old NH Sickle bar mower. Thanks for sharing!
Oh that takes me back! In the uk, finger-bar mowers were replaced by drum mowers or "flyin saucers " in the 70s .We never had the luxury of an elevator tho! All thrown up by hand.
Great mowing for a 9 year old. nice clip, brings back memories of my own childhood sad there gone.
I have never seen a JD baler that operated to the side as that one did. Interesting. Thank you.
Love the real life vintage video and the old Ford truck
Thanks for this images. Best regards from Argentina.
You started young in those days, operating that sickle bar mower like a pro. Never seen a baler like that before. I grew up with IH machines here in New Zealand in the 1960s.
Great old film footage of the past.
The baler is similar to the David Brown one of that era, with a side bale chamber, not very successful, from memory
Bloody great to see i can remember helping the old man sharpening the knife we had a new holland mower. All the best mate , great memories.
Great video to have Thanks for sharing
Beautiful job I enjoy the video thank.
That baler is a John Deere 116W. We had one like it. Yours was newer than ours because of the strippers that's on the pickup. If those Needles are positioned right and the timing is right it never misses a bale. If I remember right ours was a 1948 model. Yours was made after 1952. It was considered the best baler on the market at that time. The biggest problem with it, is everything had to be in time. Even the feeder had to be in time. The Wisconsin engine could be a bitch to start sometimes. One of the biggest problems is the whole thing had chains to drive the various parts. The pickup, the middle feeder, the feeder that shoved the hay in the bale chamber and the needles were all driven by chains the only thing not drive by a chain is the plunger head and every thing timed to it. Chains wear out and as a result you lose your time. It would go a 100,000 bales and not miss one. We baled over a million bales with ours and they weighed a average of 110 pounds. Thanks for sharing.
Agree that Wisconsin engine was hard to start when it was hot. Standard operating procedure was to start it and not turn it off until you were done with it for the day.
Great video. We had nh super 77 with a v4 motor. It had electric start. The bale loader is really cool. Never saw a powered one. The ones I've seen are ground driven.
Lot of memories.
I just mowed hay with my 48 H Farmall and IHC simi mount mower. Raked it with my dads (then) mine now JD steel wheel rake. Never saw a bale pickup like that. Would have been handy
I was 6 years old then not old enough to drive the tractor, but chased the millions of grasshoppers, all different colors and sizes, and garter snakes, frogs, toads, mice, birds nests, that existed then. Some hoppers were big as your hand 2 1/2". There were thousands of praying mantis, walking stick bugs 3" long, spittle bugs, flying squirrels, bobcats, deer, badgers, weasels. Seems like only a few days, or seconds have gone by? At other times; it's like a million years have slipped away. What the heck happened in between? We are but stardust in the expanding universe it seems. All the wonderful people we all knew disappeared like a puff of smoke. The world was still so full of hope, and optimism then. Not so much anymore? People even in rural areas had (common sense), and could read, and write well, think outside their small rural world with their imagination. Today, they are often brain dead from TV, radical talk radio poison, and (not very smart phone filth); many times; not always.. Don't even mention the drugs, booze, meth, fentanyl. Horrendous tragedy. It was a more respectful more optimistic attitude even with all the worlds problems. We thought we could fix it. No time to be pessimistic, or feel sorry for ourselves. Get studying! Get to work! That's the answer. Thanks for the beautiful memory. So precious.
So cool you have these old films from your dad. Thanks for sharing!
Hi, nice video and a rare video...😅👌
this is really cool
I used to help my uncle do the same thing back in the day…1960s
THAT WAS A GREAT VIDDY AND BOY OH BOY COULD THAT YOUNG,UN OPERATE THAT LIL FERGIE
Those balers would make a 150 lb bale that would keep it's shape even held by the wires. Ran one behind a John Deere B.
That's the way I did it when I was little
thanks for the video
Great video.....where was this
Denman District, Upper Hunter Valley NSW Australia. Glad you enjoyed it....
A very productive having operation
we was the same way but we had a alis roto Baler made small round bales
Nice piece of history, lovely to see some old film of the kit we lust after today being worked in its day. Any more ?
نَفُشُتِّ وَتُهَ ألمَصأيِبْ وِشَ تِسُويِ لَم وَلَن أَبْدَل نِعْمَةَ اللَّهِ مَعِى فِي الْحِلِّ وَالتَّرْحَال 🔨🇺🇳🕋⚖من مُقِرٌّ مَجْلِس الأُمَمُ الْمُتَّحِدَةُ عَادِلٌ حَلّ عَادِلٌ مُنْصِفٌ الْآن وَجَمِيع الْأَوْقَات وَ شُّكْرُ لِلَّه .
Great stuff.
Any more old footage? keep it coming.
lovely, we have a grey fergie wondering weather to get a finger mower [think thats wot yours is !] not seen one working before, regards .
The work ethic presented...now, let's go to an urban environment and look for those work ethics. What will we find?
Unfortunately I haven't got anything else machinery wise.
Thanks, for that bit of film.. suer takes me back.
was this in england?
No. Denman, NSW Australia
@@fendtman50 could’ve fooled be. Hell I though you were here in the U.S.
Wow, what a weird concept for a baler. John Deere was clearly a lot behind other manufacturers like New Holland or Claas
New Holland made a side delivery baler at one time. Apparently it put a lot of strain on the wheel bearings.
It actually follows a logical path for the hay, and PTO power delivery, but like the other commenter says will break the wheels off the thing.
@@batcoifgaming7815 Interestingly we never had a problem with wheel or bearing failure in the 15 years of service. That baler did a lot of work as dad contract baled for several neighbouring dairy farmers. Pretty sure somewhere I have a new spare plunger arm that was never required.....
Fascinating stuff! - but a 9 year old around dangerous machinery like that?? Those sickle bar mowers could be lethal!
That 9 year old kid was/is more of a man than most males on the liberal ticket...
Ox..., at 8, I was driving the ferguson, pulling the McCormick bailer(with Wisconsin engine), while dad was on the wagon stacking... he sure was a long ways back... I lost one cat...
Ox, ... and I'm a progressive... go figure...:)
My dad was mowing @ 5 on a brand new 8n. My uncle still uses it. Dad just hollers now.
This was way before the nanny state Today kids are not allowed to do or be taught anything.