Wartime threshing memories

Pennine Ploughing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Might be of some interest to many on here


There is hours and hours of film footage from years gone by
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
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
I wonder if it was your uncle came and built the combine my father owned. It was a 21 and turned up in a box from Canada just before harvest. Apparently a guy came and built it with help from the farm staff in the yard. As soon as it was finished he had to leave to build others, leaving Father to get on with it, never having driven a combine before. Mother actually drove it and father bagged off.
 

forblue

Member
Ref war-ag my father worked for them repairing machinery after the war at one main depot in Writtle near Chelmsford Essex then in late 47 transferring to Wadham Park Farm Hockley Essex till end of war-ag in 48, i remember going with him to both places and once from Writtle he had to go somewhere other side of London he asked if he could take me but foreman stated no, dad told me to wait outside and picked me up when we went through London we stopped on the embankment first time i had seen the Thames and looked at some of the bombed houses, then in the early 50's while working on a farm at Gt Burstead nr Billericay Essex he taught me to drive a tractor, binder ploughing and how to load sheaves on a trailer, great times although hard......
 
My father gave up his horses in 1947 and bought 2 s/h Standard Fordsons. An orange one with wide wings, rear spade lugs and steel front wheels, the other one was green with clipped wings. It had rubbers on the rear wheels but steels on the front.

I never drove the orange one as it was exchanged for a TVO e27n, in about 1949 or 50 when I was 5 or 6, that had steel fronts, rear rubbers, no electrics but had hydraulics and a fore end loader. That was changed for a E1A Fordson Major when they first came out and then sequentially for a Power Major and a Super Major. I started driving the tractors when I was 13 so that was with the Power major and the green standard.

I have 2 memories of Threshing. The first, when I was very small, was of the thresher being pulled up to the top of the farm with a Standard Fordson. It had a winch to pull the thresher forwards when it became stuck in the mud.

When I was a bit older I remember quite well the threshing outfit. Powering it was an e27n P6. Fordson. That was my first sighting of the four circle Perkins badge. I know that it was difficult to move the sacks of corn on the soft ground with sack trucks that had smallish steel wheels. So much so that my father had some made with 16" inflatable tyres. I think that the threshing contractor was Godfrey Waters from Orcheston on Salisbury plane. Many years later we wanted an extra tractor for odd jobs and bought an old e27n P6 and guess whose name was in the log book, Godfrey Waters!
 
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Lincsman

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
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

Dad told me some of the combines never actually worked, maybe it was the assembling skills lacking on some farms?
 

PuG

Member
Sorry not as per say threshing but there use to be an old boy living local to us, im not sure hes still going but when I last spoke to him 4 years ago was fit for his age (in his 90's and still driving).

We use to farm near RAF Cleave used mostly as an anti aircraft training field and emergency runway for bombers coming in from the States. There was a small cove called Standbury mouth - during the war they farmed the two fields either side, incredibly steep and he could remember working those fields as a lad, only running the reaper binder down hill holding it on the brake and the military base use to fire of the Bofers guns straight out overhead. Exciting but the horses never appreciated it!
 

2wheels

Member
Location
aberdeenshire
My father gave up his horses in 1947 and bought 2 s/h Standard Fordsons. An orange one with wide wings, rear spade lugs and steel front wheels, the other one was green with clipped wings. It had rubbers on the rear wheels but steels on the front.

I never drove the orange one as it was exchanged for a TVO e27n in about 1949 or 50, when I was 5 or 6. That had steel fronts, rear rubbers, no electrics but had hydraulics and a fore end loader. That was changed for a E1A Fordson Major when they first came out and then sequentially for a Power Major and a Super Major. I started driving the tractors when I was 13 so that was with the Power major and the green standard.

I have 2 memories of Threshing. The first, when I was very small, was of the thresher being pulled up to the top of the farm with a Standard Fordson. It had a winch to pull the thresher forwards when it became stuck in the mud.

When I was a bit older I remember quite well the threshing outfit. Powering it was an e27n P6. Fordson. That was my first sighting of the four circle Perkins badge. I know that it was difficult to move the sacks of corn on the soft ground with sack trucks that had smallish steel wheels. So much so that my father had some made with 16" inflatable tyres. I think that the threshing contractor was Godfrey Waters from Orcheston on Salisbury plane. Many years later we wanted an extra tractor for odd jobs and bought an old e27n P6 and guess whose name was in the log book, Godfrey Waters!
sack trucks? we had to carry the bloody things.
 

Kevtherev

Member
Location
Welshpool Powys
1963 winter here 5 fordson majors tried to move a thrashing box in terrible conditions through drifts and failed.
Was then taken up the fields which were clear of snow and moved to next farm.My late grandfather and his brother on the two lead majors.
A shame no photographs were taken.
 

Sprayer

Member
Location
South Derbyshire
My first memories of threshing would be just after the war, probably 49/50, the threshing set was pulled usually by a case LA but occasionally depending which set came an Allis model U. I remember the Case had a winch that was used to pull the drum up the drive when it was icy. The Case was replaced about 1952 with a new E1A Fordson Major when they came out, it was quite something to see, it had twin wheels, a Winsam cab and a Boughton winch.
 

Agri Spec Solicitor

Member
Livestock Farmer
I can only just remember threshing in our stack yard in early 1960s. A diesel Major called Daisy drove a pinkish coloured thresher by a belt, and at the other end our IH 414 and B45 mk2 baled the straw. I recall dad saying he knew no living person who had consumed more dust than the contractor who cut the strings and put the crop into the drum. Yet he still lived a long healthy life despite being covered in dust. The excitement for us boys was all at the end when people with terriers turned up to catch rats under the stack. Then they got an MF 788 tvo combine with a bagger.
 

robbie

Member
BASIS
My grandad on mums side started out contracting between the wars with a fordson model F on spud wheels. He offered ploughing, cultivating, hay mowing and binding.
His sevices were so popular that he bought a second tractor a international 10-20 on rubbers with the intention of his younger brother driving it but in grandads words" he was a lazy bugger" so he sold the model F and just used the 10-20 but when the war arived he struggled because of fuel and rubber rationing.

My great grandad on dads side took delivery of two Massey harris 21 combines just after the war. They arrived in crates and a chap came to assemble them with the help of the farm staff. Both were tankers with canvas beds with sail reels but one had an electric table lift!!!!!!!

After they'd been assembled a lorry arrive to take away the packing cases, presumably to re use but great grandad said hed bought the combined with the crates and if they wanted to take the crates away theyd have to take the combines aswell. Needless to say they left the crates and and they were made into chicken sheds.

Grandad drove one from new and his cousin the other cutting over a 1000 acres a year. Everything was bulk into lorries/trailer, a pair of ford V8 lorries were the main haulage, then it was put through the dryer which was powered at that time by coke and was all put through a dresser aswell before being bagged and stored.
It had to be bagged as no one had a means of loading lorries with bulk and non of the merchants could handle bulk.

The 21's were powered by Chrysler straight 6 petrol engines which were later converted to tvo.

Everytime one broke down great grandad would drive across the field to see who to send for and apparently his favourite quote when they broke was to say "course they've gone and broke down, there isnt two bloody wheels turn the Same way" a saying we still use today when w have problems with the combine.

They were replaced by a pair of silver class SFs in the late 50s early sixties
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
they put the two fields behind the house here in to corn for the war ag, Dad said they came to thrash it and the thrasher was driven with a steam engine, one chap would arrive really early to get the engine going, Dad said they were a rough lot and would get on the cider fall out and fight like mad come the end of the day.

I have helped reed combing but never thrashing, I have cut binds but my job was usually feeding the baler, stacking the bales on the trailer and shovelling the corn back in the trailer, use to jump of the side of the corn trailer over the main drive belt to save walking right round the tractor [fecking nuts], I would have been around 15 at the time
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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