Wartime threshing memories

[startinghandle]

I have just been talking to a 96 year old gentleman who is still fairly active and remembers threshing with Fordson on lugs during war ... can't be many left

 

[Clive]

I have just been talking to a 96 year old gentleman who is still fairly active and remembers threshing with Fordson on lugs during war ... can't be many left

You should record him, these things will soon be lost for ever

 

[David1985]

Would be good if someone could collate and make into a book all the old story’s and even some modern ones. A chap I work with is full of them he could write his own series of books, his words no one wants to listen to an old fool like me. I said you would be surprised who would read it. Like @Clive said these memories will soon be gone.

 

[startinghandle]

You should record him, these things will soon be lost for ever

I will ask him

 

[haggard143]

I have just been talking to a 96 year old gentleman who is still fairly active and remembers threshing with Fordson on lugs during war ... can't be many left

Dad used to say they were,nt allowed strakes on the road round here however one bad winter during the war they said put them on , He said they churned the roads to death but got about, as a teenager and later I tended to go " Oh here he goes again" Now find myself doing same to my kids

 

[renewablejohn]

I have taken to doing a video diary everytime I see my 93 year old mother. Wish I had started sooner but technology has come on in the last 10 years with phones replacing video cameras.

 

[timff]

I worked with two old boys in the early 80s who had their own respective tractors on the farm that they called their ‘horses’. It was lovely. We have photos of harvest 1953 with dad driving an ex army Chev truck loaded with sheaves. He’s still full of beans!

 

[7610 super q]

Post war, sometime in the 1950's I think. Contractors gear.

 

[Lofty1984]

I worked with two old boys in the early 80s who had their own respective tractors on the farm that they called their ‘horses’. It was lovely. We have photos of harvest 1953 with dad driving an ex army Chev truck loaded with sheaves. He’s still full of beans!

Care to share them ?

 

[timff]

Yep will do when got scanner working!

 

[timff]

Here goes. Chev is under what looks like a stack on the right!

 

[timff]

New Dexta in Jan 1959. It’s now in my cart shed...

 

[ARW]

A relation of ours favourite story
He went to help the threshing gang as a young lad, a few hours in one of the men collapsed and died of a suspected heart attack.
They covered him with a sheet and carried on threshing for the day, luckily the vicar biked past later in the day so he would call the undertaker when he got home!

 

[timff]

Big brother helping out with churns to the churn table!

 

[Y Fan Wen]

Dad had 2 standard fordsons after the war, one on cleats and one on spade lugs. He had land on both sides of a minor road and laid planks down to move them across. They had a worm wheel on the final drive I believe. One day crossing the road the castellated nut on the shaft came free and the worm hit the access cover in the diff jamming it all up. Of course it was the day the once a week bus service to the market town ran and it was due! Panics, until he realised that putting it in reverse would pull the wheel back on the shaft so he was able to clear the road.

 

[Richard Devon]

A fascinating subject. I often thought it would be nice to write a book about the farm contractors that were around from the war (2) onwards detailing how they started and the stories from then, but as you say the knowledge is disappearing fast.

Also it would be interesting to know know more about the War-Ag


Seems they used to bring a steam engine and thresher to us if they didn't finish the first day the stoker would arrive about 6 in the morning, get the engine fired up then come in home for a fry up.

Anyway one particularly wet autumn they made a right mess winching it all in and getting set up that my late grandfather said that would be the last year unless things changed.....anyway the contractor upgraded to a Marshall after that.

 

[Wellytrack]

My grandfather had a Fordson E27N during the war years, it was partly bought by the war office on the strength of him pulling rail wagons of flax in and out of the Linen Mill four miles away.

 

[5020man]

Hi
Oh no he didnt.
e27n came out 1946/7.

 

[Tonym]

Both my father and uncle used to go around contract threashing before, during and after the 2nd World War. They had two Foster threashing boxes one with a Class low density baler and one with a Lorant which was a French copy of the Claas. They used Massey Harris tractors, a 201 and a 203 with winches which came over on lease lend during the war. The tractors were identical except one had a Chrysler 6cyl. engine and the other a Continental both running on TVO..

I remember as a young child going with my father to the local railway station to pick up a self feeder for one of the threashers. Up until then the man that fed the sheaves of corn stood over a hole with the drum spinning below. The self feeders had a rotating canvas that fed the drum and stopped the feeder falling in!

My other uncle used to work for Massey Harris and after the war went round the country building up the first Massey Harris 21 combines that came over from Canada in crates. He then rebuild a combime that had been in a fire and started contracting with it.



d

 

[puppet]

A relation of ours favourite story
He went to help the threshing gang as a young lad, a few hours in one of the men collapsed and died of a suspected heart attack.
They covered him with a sheet and carried on threshing for the day, luckily the vicar biked past later in the day so he would call the undertaker when he got home!

I heard a similar story when grandpa collapsed in the hay field. When someone commiserated with his widow she said they left him there until night and carried on as rain was forecast the next day. When they suggested he would be missed she replied that 'He was done for workin anyway'.