Uncle Carl's Farm Machinery

Which bring me to the subject of Uncle Carl and his farm machinery. Shortly after we arrived on the farm, he purchased on of the first rubber tired tractors in the neighborhood. The thought, of course, was that there would be took much slippage with them versus the older steel lugged wheels. But they proved quite satisfactory.

He purchased one of the first power-lift cultivators which we boys appreciated as we saw the neighbor boys lift the cultivator sections by hand at the end of each set of rows. About 1938 he purchased one of the first small combines in the neighborhood. He took us boys to see various models in the neighborhood, but none pleased him as much as the Case A-6 that he bought. This machine with many of its modifications, was still operating in 1959 as the last crop of soybeans that he raised was harvested. It was a cold snowy day in December of that year. The farm had been sold and his soybean crop was unharvested. I took my combine from where I was farming, and went to the Peterson farm to harvest the beans. Water from the snow got into the main gear case and my machine broke down. So we cranked up his old 1938 combine and combined the last two rows. So ended his farming career.

He was the first during the prewar years to purchase new machines. He became one of the first owners of a plow with throwaway lays. This plow also survived his farming years, although the moldboards were worn clear through in places. This piece of machinery plus the combine, the 1936 F-20 tractor, and other items were pulled into the back lot of the Peterson house in Gowrie for what turned out to be one last attempt at a farming operation. The locala small town newspaper came out with an ad wanting to rent forty acres. Needless to say, no one would rent to a near eighty-year-old man with 25-year-old (and more) machinery.

Uncle Carl was one of the first to own and operate a two-row mounted cornpicker. It is interesting for me to reflect on the fact that after graduating from Iowa State College in 1948, my first job was designing a mounted cornpicker for John Deere. It was my duty during some of my high school years to haul corn from the cornpicker to the corn crib using Birdie and Barney to pull the wagon. This was not an easy task since it was usually late fall before he came home from doing custom work for others to pick his own corn. In 1940, the year of an Armistice Day blizzard,  he had harvested little corn and we “worried through” the drifts at the ends of the field as we tried to harvest the corn after that snow.

The unloading of the corn at the crib was an exercise in patience. The double crib had been built by Uncle Carl some years before, and included a homemade inside elevator. It did not always function well, with the elevator chain periodically coming off the track. Instead of a wagon hoist, the wagon was tipped up using dump logs. It was a miracle that no one was ever hurt in this operation. The elevator was operated with a one-cylinder 6 H.P. engine. The trick was to get it started in the morning and then let the motor run all day. It had a low tension ignition system with breaker points instead of a spark plug. Of all the machines on the farm, I would life to have kept it, as this would have been a relic. It, however, was destroyed when the crib burned in 1947. But that’s another story!