48 Like Us on Facebook: BetterFarmingON Better Farming | December 2023 LOOKING BACK & AHEAD Reflecting on the past, present & future of machinery. By Ralph Winfield When I went for my driving test at 16, the evaluator suggested that I had been on the road a lot. I assured him that I had. Back then, many miles had been racked up with the field sprayer as early as 12, but many had also been with a car or truck primarily on rural roads in Waterloo County. The freedoms of rural youth have since changed. Most of us older farm people have seen many very significant changes over our lifetimes. As a young lad, my family and I had the standard farm of 100 acres with 10 milk cows, some pigs, a few laying hens and three ducks. We separated the milk, sold the cream and fed the skim milk to the pigs along with ground grain. The hens provided eggs for personal consumption and sale while my aunt sold the ducks and their eggs for me at the weekly market in Guelph. Corn row-spacing had been set at 36 to 38 inches to allow for scuffling and the standard forage harvester head used to fill the common vertical silos. Our first concrete silo was only 10 feet in diameter and 30 feet high. As a teenager, I helped place the concrete for that little silo. There was a community spirit. Community efforts allowed for threshing gangs covering six to 10 farms. We all worked together with one farmer owning and operating the threshing machine. As a young member of the team, I was always assigned the task of loading the wagon and feeding the threshing machine. I never pitched sheaves onto the wagon. The older men preferred to keep both feet on the ground, while the women of the host farm family always had a large table of food ready for the threshing gang. But things changed significantly as the cow numbers increased to 40 cows, acreage increased, pork production became a specialized business and a greater trend grew outside of growing cash crops. Cows had to be milked twice a day, every day of the year. This is what caused me to leave the home farm and go off to college. Some work-sharing continued to control the cost of machinery that was primarily for planting, spraying and harvesting equipment. Most 40-cow dairy herd farms continued to have their own forage harvesting and hay or straw baling equipment. As machinery size increased, there was a need for more acres to be covered. Grain and corn harvesting combines are an example. When I returned to the Thomson home farm in Elgin County, I bought a planter, sprayer and a large combine. I did a lot of work- sharing with a dairy farmer neighbour and custom combining for other dairy farmers in the area. Some people who wanted a large building lot often bought a farm and rented out or sharecropped the acreage. Other farmers bought farms and removed the buildings to eliminate maintenance and education taxes on the residence. Row width had also decreased significantly, thus the lack of a need for row crop cultivators. Selective herbicides have taken control of almost all weeds. I still have a “relatively new” row crop cultivator sitting unused in the implement shed. I remember as a young lad on the home farm in Waterloo County, we built a field sprayer mounted on a Ford 8N tractor. I sprayed hundreds of acres of grain and corn every year as there was no interest in spraying by most livestock producers. The large custom sprayer units or operators were not available then like they are today. I also remember buying a fertilizer spreader after moving to the Thomson farm to ensure availability and reliability. Days could be spent (or wasted) waiting to get a rental unit. Prior to purchasing my own, I had gotten a How it Works This restored Ford 8N tractor is exactly like the one I sprayed hundreds of acres with every year as a teenager in Waterloo County. The sprayer was homemade with a foldable pipe-boom mounted on the front axle and a metal tank on the drawbar. The gear-type spray pump was powered by the PTO. Ralph Winfield photo How it Works
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