Who remembers when

[Timber]

Dad hitched an old horse drawn plow to the back of an AG tractor and turned to you and said son get up in that seat right there and work that plow while I pull you through the field. You get up on that contraption and set your heals into the steering and grab on to the levers to set the blades. I might have been 10 years old. You drop off the header into the field and ease the blade into the earth and then she bites and starts to roll the earth over. Your doing your best to keep a strait line but never strait enough for dad. Your legs are so tired and then you reach the header on the other end and you can relax for a minute or 2 as dad swings the plow around for the next pass. You drop the other blade and she bites hard and this is your weak arm. Dad yells because you bit to deep and stopped the tractor. A new bite and the soil rolls off that shiny blade. 1/2 a day goes by and 2 dozen stone threaten to turn you over or tear your arm out of the shoulder and you just wish the sun would set so the day would end. Do you remember when. I have that plow to this very day so I would never forget. I keep it in perfect working condition

 

[beenthere]

I see one plow, and no seat, but two handles.

I remember doing that and it sure was better than following a team of three horses, trying to keep them in line and all the rest at the same time.

 

[TripleR]

Great picture and story, I missed out on that by a couple of years.

 

[looknlearn]

I recently plowed a field with a team of three horses on a almost brand new Pioneer plow. I really enjoyed that. My only problem was getting everything swung around at the end of each furrow and starting straight. What I like about horses is that there is no noise, and no smoke. All you hear is the plow slicing though the earth.:cloud9: (maybe not quite cloud 9 but I enjoyed it)
Tucker

 

[MBDiagMan]

I'm young enough to have missed it too. My Grand Dad had a poppin' Johnny and all the trimmin's by the time I came along. The only horses on the place were cow horses. Maybe there's a lot to be said for youth after all.

 

[Timber]

Yes sadly the seat and the spring plate it mounted on went MIA by the time I retrieved the plow from my dad some years ago. My dad bought a small horse farm in NC about 8 years ago and I was helping him move when I saw he still had that old plow. I asked him if I could have it and He couldn't understand why I wanted it. I told him that I earned it with the years of my childhood sweat I put into that old iron. I don't think it meant much to him but to me it is a big piece of my past. Every time I look at it I travel back to the days I was a boy and remember how much I hated it. As a man I see a piece of my past that shaped who I am today. It can only mean something to me. I hadn't seen it in 30 years when I asked my dad for it. When I saw it after all those years the flood of memory overwhelmed me and I never realized how important those early days really are to us. I think my dad saw it in my eyes when I looked at it and asked him for it. I guess it is kinda silly but sometimes thinks can hit you pretty hard.

 

[teg]

Good story... that's pretty neat to have the same plow... too bad about the seat. Looks good in the yard... :thumbsup:

 

[Opti-Mist]

Ah, yes! My family stopped farming with horses the year I was born so a lot of our implements were converted from horse drawn, and some still had the seats as needed. Gardens were plowed with a walking plow and potatoes hilled similarly. Hay was still raked with a dump rake and pushed to the barn with a push rake to be raised into the mow with slings which were tractor powered now. Oh yah, memories! :thumbsup:

 

[Adiredneck]

I remember sitting on a sickle bar mower (wheel powered), while my dad pulled me with the tractor. We used to mow the sides of the dirt roads with it. I don't remember why, since we also had a JD sickle bar mower that went behind the JD420. Maybe dad wanted to save the big one for the hay field.

I also remember lots of hours on a trip-type hay rake. Getting yelled at when I hit the foot trip too early. I was about 10 years old. I could barely stay in the seat because my legs were short. We also had a 3ph pto rake that we used. They never did like that one. Of course we always did things the hard way.

 

[bp fick]

Yes, good memories. Indeed, my childhood was spent on a few horse drawn implements, pulled by my Dad on his tractor. Had to step on the lever and raise the mower blade on many an occasion to pass over a rock or what have you. I have no physical items from those days. More than a few regrets about not having something. Just a few old photos. Glad you have the implement.

 

[blueriver]

remeber when ... I got some of that good old equipment as well as a couple differnt teams of mules ... last year Mike and Maude hit the decks a runnin when the old seat spring on the sickle mower broke ... sounded like a shot gun went off!!

I hit the ground ... the team and the mower where found standin at the hitchin rail ...

 

[MBDiagMan]

Yes sadly the seat and the spring plate it mounted on went MIA by the time I retrieved the plow from my dad some years ago. My dad bought a small horse farm in NC about 8 years ago and I was helping him move when I saw he still had that old plow. I asked him if I could have it and He couldn't understand why I wanted it. I told him that I earned it with the years of my childhood sweat I put into that old iron. I don't think it meant much to him but to me it is a big piece of my past. Every time I look at it I travel back to the days I was a boy and remember how much I hated it. As a man I see a piece of my past that shaped who I am today. It can only mean something to me. I hadn't seen it in 30 years when I asked my dad for it. When I saw it after all those years the flood of memory overwhelmed me and I never realized how important those early days really are to us. I think my dad saw it in my eyes when I looked at it and asked him for it. I guess it is kinda silly but sometimes thinks can hit you pretty hard.

Great posts!

I think that your Dad was being a good parent naturally, rather than strategically thinking about the good it would do for you. In addition in the days of hard work, before so many in our Nation became so spoiled, it was just a matter that there was work to be done, so we do it.

What I would like to have from my youth, that parallels your plow, would be the old pair of posthole diggers that my Grand Dad called "character builder."

 

[ToadHill]

I never worked with horse drawn equipment but the Amish in my area use nothing but that, and I see them in the field all the time.

I do remember throwing hay bails up 5 tiers on a wagon then climbing into the hay loft as the hooks came up the pullies to dump a load that had to be restacked.

Climbing up to the top of the silo to throw down silage to feed the 82 milkers we worked with, and shoveling out the gutters with a wheelbarrow and running it up a ramp to dump into the spreader. The pulling that through the field with on old Oliver Row Crop 77.

 

[nue2farm]

We did not have horse drawn equipment, we lived on about 4 acres in Central Arkansas. My Dad used a push plow, the kind that had a large wheel in front and handles on back. He used to hook my brother and I up to it with ropes and we pulled it while he pushed.

I remember him borrowing a plow and a mule from a BIL. That mule gave him a real workout..... I guess that's why he used us from then on. I may have to get one of those plows to "spook" my brother with:thumbsup:

 

[RalphVa]

I'm glad that I didn't have to mess with horses. Messing with cows at milking time was enough.

I was plowing fields (with a tractor) by the time I was about 8 or 9. I remember the ole tractor engine getting a BIG boost when I ran out of propane and had to switch back to gasoline. Never heard much about diesels in our part of Oklahoma. The smarter ones must have used them. Maybe it wasn't available in our area.

Hardest work was pulling boles or weeding corn/cotton with a hoe or hauling hay.

Ralph

 

[mbrule]

I never got the kind of experience that you guys did with equipment. But we did have a large garden that was my brother and I's responsibility. We kept chickens for eggs, also our job. Raised one cow and tended to my Father's Ex's horses. Always working, though not quite farming.

I wish that I had got more experience around farms, farm equipment, and killing animals for food.

I fear that kids today will have even less experience in these basic skills than me!

Thanks for the posts, I am enjoying the reading......

 

[Bird]

I can remember my granddad selling his last pair of horses when I was 5 years old (a gray mare named Snip and a bay mare named Nellie). And I can remember watching my dad plow the garden with a team of mules (the mules actually belonged to our landlord at the time). When dad bought 10 acres, and also rented 25 adjacent acres for pasture, he also bought an old 1940 John Deere L. We had a horse drawn disc and dad asked mother to ride on the seat for added weight while he pulled it with the John Deere. When they went over a terrace, mother did a back flip off that disc seat. She wasn't hurt, but she wasn't about to get back on there either.:laughing: Dad had to find some big rocks and concrete blocks to tie on for weight.

 

[Dale Ks]

This line from the original post made me laugh "Your doing your best to keep a strait line but never strait enough for dad."

My grandmother recently passed away at the age of 96 and I had the pleasure of going through her things and settling the estate. Ok going through her things was the pleasant part, not so much the estate. Anyway she would write little notes and things, put them in a box for keeping. One of the notes I found was that her dad told her that he could always tell at harvest if she did the plowing or planting because the harvest was better as the crooked rows yielded a higher percentage as she could get more seed in a crooked row.

 

[mooseracing]

I have used a horse drawn slipbucket attached to a tractor growing up. Still got thrown around on that thing. My grandparents dug their foundation in clay with that same slipbucket behind an old A-C, way to high if gearing. Then I got stuck on it when I was younger, some days though my dad would put the tractor in low range, hop off get it to dig, then hop back on.