From when things were made simple, but tough by Americans.

[tamrock]

I see a lot of stuff on the "what is it" forum that are parts from these old type of Agg Equipment. These were just left in the now open space lands. You can tell the field was left fallow one last time and never planted again.. This field is all going back to nature now. Built from American steel these old relics were. The old disc I could see was built by International Harvester and I couldn't find any identifiable information on the old planter.

 

[kingskid1611]

There are a lot of old fields here in Oklahoma with dilapidating equipment from them dust bowl day. I like to look at them and wonder what color they were in their prime. Nice pics.

 

[kcm]

The area I live still has quite many folks still using such old equipment, and even antique tractors. I have the utmost respect for those folks, as they refuse to go into debt for 20-30 years from buying newer and bigger machinery, which then means they have to work more land. There's a lot to be said for working ground at a pace where you can actually look around and see the quality of what you're harvesting - where you grow smaller crops for quality rather than thousands of acres for quantity. Maybe that means selling to restaurants, open-air markets, farmer's markets, or even on the side of the road, rather than just trucking it all to some huge drop point or even out of state.

2 ways of looking at the same coin.

 

[Old Dude]

Living here in Pennsylvania, I see a lot of old equipment still being used by the Amish. That old steel lasts a long time.

 

[tamrock]

Living here in Pennsylvania, I see a lot of old equipment still being used by the Amish. That old steel lasts a long time.

My wife grew up in NW PA and when I was back there I was riding around with her dad and I saw an old iron wheel tractor in the barn of an Amish farm and I asked him why they have a gas fired tractor and being Amish and all. He said some groups approve a tractor as long as it doesn't have rubber tires.

 

[tamrock]

The area I live still has quite many folks still using such old equipment, and even antique tractors. I have the utmost respect for those folks, as they refuse to go into debt for 20-30 years from buying newer and bigger machinery, which then means they have to work more land. There's a lot to be said for working ground at a pace where you can actually look around and see the quality of what you're harvesting - where you grow smaller crops for quality rather than thousands of acres for quantity. Maybe that means selling to restaurants, open-air markets, farmer's markets, or even on the side of the road, rather than just trucking it all to some huge drop point or even out of state.

2 ways of looking at the same coin.

I had a great uncle in Iowa who was like that. When he died around 1998 he was in his mid 90's. His newest tractor was a 1958 Farmall and his last car was a 1966 Ford Galaxie with less then 60K miles on it. I pretty much taught myself how to operate a manual transmission on that Farmall when I was like 11 years old. My great uncle explained just a little to me on how to do it and off I went. It was such a thrill getting into high gear and sailing down an access road in the corn field on that tractor. It is one of those memories you hold on too. Thousands of acres that were once farm fields around here are being developed and the old ways of the way things were are being erased over the last 38 years I lived here. I took a picture from a hill of the old wheat field. You can see the new tollway to the Denver Airport and a huge hospital complex built within the last 10, 15 years over this old farm country now.

 

[BosnMate]

Wonder what happened to the wheel on that planter? Sure is out of round, and something would have to hit that pretty hard to bend it like that. I was out on the Nevada desert, checking cows and came across an old mowing machine and horse bones, a couple of miles at least from the bottom land where they had been cutting hay. The location and the bones makes you think they had a run away team, killed the horses, and they never tried to salvage the mowing machine.

 

[tamrock]

Wonder what happened to the wheel on that planter? Sure is out of round, and something would have to hit that pretty hard to bend it like that. I was out on the Nevada desert, checking cows and came across an old mowing machine and horse bones, a couple of miles at least from the bottom land where they had been cutting hay. The location and the bones makes you think they had a run away team, killed the horses, and they never tried to salvage the mowing machine.

Who knows maybe some snowmobile'r didn't see it and hit it doing 50 mph?. That be a lot better on ya then hitting a barb wire fence on one of those don't ya think?

 

[Bullet:Mich.]

A lot of horse drawn equipment still being used today and it is kept up in excellent shape. Parts can still be bought for the older equipment.

 

[tamrock]

Yeah, if I ever do run a small mine, I'd go with mule powered haulage and mine access. I'm thinking that be so much less impact on the environment. Definitely a lot less cost over today's modern mining capital equipment. I was looking online at other IH disc like the one here and it looks like this one was maybe from the late 1920 to early 1930s.

 

[Bullet:Mich.]

If I lived in the area that you guys do I would be traveling the country side with a big 4 wheel drive wrecker asking permission to pick up all the abandon equipment so all the good parts could be salvaged.