I remember when.............

[Courier]

Stooking ....... The worst was barley which needed long sleeves and you ended up with boots full of barley awns .

Best forgotten about really..

 

[down n'dirty]

I remember my dad spending best part of a week trying to cut a very laid field of grass for hay with a fingerbar mower before inviting our local MF salesman to demo a new fangled disc mower- a MF 51? I think. An hour later the field was cut and the mower stayed on the farm!

 

[Courier]

I remember my dad spending best part of a week trying to cut a very laid field of grass for hay with a fingerbar mower before inviting our local MF salesman to demo a new fangled disc mower- a MF 51? I think. An hour later the field was cut and the mower stayed on the farm!

Even the PTO driven fingerbar mower was a revelation compared to a wheel driven version

 

[Exfarmer]

I cut a lot of permanent grass with a fingerbar and it certainly paid to keep them in absolutely tip top nick, we often changed knives every hour for a freshly sharpened one, but the most important was to have the fingers set absolutely perfectly and sharpened regularly. The Whizzler was a very welcome arrival but did not last long. We were lucky to get an early Vicon prototype , which was replaced 2 or 3 times as they developed them, eventually ending up with a full blown Olympus , we were certainly cruising then

 

[betweenthelines]

Father set a big vice on an iron girder bedded in concrete in the yard.

As soon as haymaking started we had a steady stream of neighbours coming in to use the vice for repairing and sharpening mower knives.

 

[chaffcutter]

@colhonk .. and me too, the day of my grandads funeral. I was 9.

 

[thorpe]

And I remember after going to YFC, - fish was 6d and chips were 3d. I could only afford chips! Total less than 4p. I think that's what they call inflation!

can you remember 1d fish tails? them were the days.

 

[thorpe]

The Bamford 4 drum Wizzler. Ground breaking revolution in grass cutting, could hear the squealing gears in the next parish, then very soon the gears were in the next parish.

View attachment 972544

oh my god id forgot about that heap of shi1 burgesses should never have gone bust after the £s they made out of spares for them things!

 

[Courier]

can you remember 1d fish tails? them were the days.

A bag of scraps with salt and vinegar . No charge.

 

[thorpe]

A bag of scraps with salt and vinegar . No charge.

yum yum!

 

[robs1]

I did have a 970 before the 2090 & it was OK , but the 2090 was a much better tractor. The dealer, Nelson Drew, told me that he normally would export the s/h Cases back to the States where they sold better.

Blimey that name is a blast from the past, my old man had a 970, bought it in 1973 iirc, paid just over 3 grand for it, remember him saying to my mother that he thought he must be mad paying that much for a tractor, came from wiltshire farmers not Drew's though.
I bought a couple of bits of kit from him, he was a right character

 

[Oliveau]

Blimey that name is a blast from the past, my old man had a 970, bought it in 1973 iirc, paid just over 3 grand for it, remember him saying to my mother that he thought he must be mad paying that much for a tractor, came from wiltshire farmers not Drew's though.
I bought a couple of bits of kit from him, he was a right character

Nelson certainly was a character, always a fag on the go, and his dad George was a nice old chap as well. Nelson had quite a sense of humour. I always remember that he had 2 calenders for customers each year: There was the nice pretty one, then there was the 'girlie' one that Mother never knew about - until somebody showed her one "No that's not ours; My Nelson would never do a thing like that."

 

[Forkdriver]

Hoeing sugar beet.. Penning kale with post and wire to fold the sheep. Pulling cutting loading and then putting mangold's into a clamp. Small paper 1cwt sacks of fertilizer. I got all the best jobs.

 

[FG.]

I remember when.....the Nuffield with Mill-Master trip loader went and a JD 2120 with their amazingly light power steering, brakes and loader with double acting rams and muck grab arrived. ( tractor still in the shed)
The arrival of a British Lely cube-8 bale accumulator and coupled to JD hydraulics (why oh why didn't dad go down the flat route!!)
The demo of a Lister, push bale along the ground backwards, bale wrapper.
We have a fair bit of sloping ridge and furrow...........thankfully I convinced father a turn-table wrapper would be better.
My first drive of a tractor, an IH414, BAM 150B.
Dad bought it new and I sold it in 2003 after packing up milking. Would love it back.

 

[Flatlander]

I cut a lot of permanent grass with a fingerbar and it certainly paid to keep them in absolutely tip top nick, we often changed knives every hour for a freshly sharpened one, but the most important was to have the fingers set absolutely perfectly and sharpened regularly. The Whizzler was a very welcome arrival but did not last long. We were lucky to get an early Vicon prototype , which was replaced 2 or 3 times as they developed them, eventually ending up with a full blown Olympus , we were certainly cruising then

I’m 52 and can remember dad having a few bomford wizzlers Back in the day. Worst part was the sauser bearings. Our farm was very Stoney and the nearing would beat out. it Set a new standard in grass cutting and paved the way for a multitude of drum and disc mowers designs

 

[betweenthelines]

Anyone remember Farendlose mowers? No gearbox but a very complicated system of belts to enable the vertical PTO drive to work the horizontal drive on the top of the drums. And it left a small stripe where the drums overlapped

 

[glasshouse]

Or even a "tamper"

A rummage

 

[Oliveau]

Even the PTO driven fingerbar mower was a revelation compared to a wheel driven version

Remember the Ransomes PTO mower? If it was on a Major, you had to have the PTO in gear for the hydraulic linkage to work. I wonder how many wooden pitmans got broken when the cutter bar was in transport position with the PTO shaft connected .

 

[Courier]

Then the virtually unblockable Kidd Rotaflail direct cut forage harvester with a 2-way chute so you could cut in the evening and wilt overnight then pick up with the same machine next day - Made some very good prize winning silage like that back in the mid 60’s.
Even managed some excellent 2nd cut Hay in under 30 hours using that machine…really !

 

[BobGreen]

First farm from leaving school would be around 1975 Doing silage with a side mounted Taarup on a Ford 4000. Forager was attached with a spear and left in field when trailer full Buckraking with an IH 414 Took about 2 weeks to do 50 acre
Year after he got contractor in with a Jag 60 on a 5000 with a Perkins 6 cylinder conversion 50 acre done in 2 days !
Not a big work rate by today’s standards but then First cut would be middle of June so huge crops