The Best Day
1968 was a great year. I was twelve, and my sister, Barb, was eleven, and this was our second year of 4-H. Between us we were taking five beef projects to the Fair that year which was quite a leap over the two projects we had in our first year. Barb, in her rookie season, whipped all comers at the Hartford Fair and at the follow-up Junior Livestock Show and Sale with a great-looking steer. This success spurred us both to take on more work for 1968. That year was my year--I won Reserve Champion Polled Hereford heifer at the Fair and followed that up with a Grand Champion Steer win at the Livestock Show. By the way, I should mention that Barb's champion steer and my great little heifer were offspring of that damnable reprobate brood cow we had (see Dad Page, Dad-ism Dictionary). Her name was 'Spook'. She was as mean as a teased Rottweiler, but we put up with her mood swings because she threw great calves.
Yes, with all of the 4-H activity and farming going on, our 52 acres was quite a busy place. Dad let me do quite a few things on my own though I was only twelve. He would assign chores for me to get done while he was at work. Well, they really weren't assigments--they were strong suggestions such as 'pull those fences posts' or 'get that brush pile cleaned up'. Of course, if a tractor were involved, it was a lot of fun.
We had become good friends with the Millers who lived just north of us about 1-1/2 miles as the crow flies. I don't know how Dad became acquainted with them. Never thought about how Dad got to know them. He just seemed to automatically know everyone. I do know that one of the Miller boys, Wayne, was an advisor in a beef 4-H club, and that's how we got started in that.
The Millers had a 70 to 80 head milking operation, and their place seemed like a flurry of activity all the time. Now, to me, that was a farm! Along with all the work involved with milking, they raised a considerable number of feeder steers. The Millers would put up tens of thousands of bales of hay per year to supplement their operation, and they had scads of various types of machinery including three tractors. One them them is mentioned elsewhere on this site. It was a MF-35 Diesel Deluxe, and I got to run that sweetie-pie a lot. They also had a JD 3020. That was the biggest tractor I had ever been around, and I thought it was the berries. On one day, I was disking with our H and an old horse-drawn two-gang disk on our farm. Apparently, Dad had arranged for Wayne to plant our corn with his JD 494 planter. Wayne stopped in to see if we were ready for him. Well, we weren't. Wayne left and in about an hour pulled into our drive with his 3020 and a 14' disk in tow. "Bob, all that boy's doin' is packing down the ground. Turn him loose with the 3020 and get that done." I just about wet my pants on the spot savoring the prospect of running that fancy rig. Dad took Wayne home. I fumbled a bit trying to figure out the JD's shift pattern, but that didn't take long. I was quickly on my way to having the time of my life! Puzzling to me was the location of the 3020's gear selector. I wondered how a shift lever that was on the dash connected to the transmission under my feet.
The Millers were wanting to get away from putting up all that hay--it just consumed so much labor , and the feed value wasn't all that hot either. They had a 60' Silica Silo installed in 1967, and then another the following year with the prospect of ensilage meeting their needs of reducing labor and higher feed value. Dad helped the Millers from time to time getting the silos filled, and that was a lot of fun because there were a lot of tractors running around doing interesting things--chopping, hauling forage boxes, and running the silage blower.
In 1968 the Millers had planted sorghum to use as ensilage. I don't know if this was a special hybrid, but this stuff grew 12' to 15' tall. There was a lot of crop per running foot of every sorghum row. The Millers has just purchased a new JD two-row silage chopper to speed up the process.
Dad and I rolled out early and headed to the Miller farm to help on the first day of silo filling that year--1968. I really looked forward to this. I must say the 3020 with the new chopper and Grove forage box in tow was a sight fit for the cover of the Farm Journal. Once silage chopping started, things weren't going as planned. The 3020 absolutely wanted no part of two sorghum rows feeding into the chopper. Wayne's Dad, Al, who was running the chopper, resorted to cutting one row at a time, and even at that, the 3020 was gasping for breath. Usually forward motion of the chopper was stopped while the cutting head drug its meal into the chopper's bowels. Once the 3020 cleared its throat, it would bog down again within 10 feet of travel. I was just amazed. The 3020 was the most powerful thing I had been around, but this harvesting job cut it down to size.
About mid-morning, an acquaintance of the Millers stopped in to do his dose of nibbing. After quickly assessing that more power was needed for the job, he left and returned with an Allis-Chalmers 190XT. The XT was quite impressive to me as it was about 50% more tractor than the 3020, and with it we were able to run the chopper while utilizing both rows of the feed head. However, despite the substantial power, progress could only be made in the 190's slowest gear. I was eating all of this up--so many tractors of a size that I only dreamed of all in one spot!
Well, I suppose the next event of this day was a twist on the old saw "The first liar out of the chute doesn't stand a chance." Wayne's brother-in-law owned part interest in a Ford Tractor dealership. Shortly after the 190 got in the batter's box, he dropped in on our operation to see how things were going and quickly smelled an opportunity to show up everyone. After jawing with everybody there about this and that, he left and in roughly an hour here came Wayne's brother-in-law grinning like a 'possum eating poop atop the most massive hunk of tractorness I'd seen up to that time. It was a brand new Ford 8000 with all 105 horses just bucking against the traces wanting to hook on to something. Off came the 190 and on went the Ford.
Wayne's brother-in-law was not known to take it easy on equipment, and this day with this opportunity for bragging rights sure didn't do anything to change his reputation. He bailed into the towering rows of the sorghum while the Ford roared. The amount and velocity of the black diesel smoke spewing from the Ford's stack indicated that this was no cake walk. Incredible amounts of chopped sorghum launched into the big Grove forage box.
It looked like we had found the answer to making this a very productive day, but progress was short-lived. The Ford was more than the JD chopper wanted, and after about an hour the chopper's PTO shaft threw in the towel. All eyes gave the PTO shaft an inspection. I stared in wonderment at the destruction. The shaft section nearest the tractor was wound up similar to a very large twist drill, and the first u-joint had simply vanished. Cool. Because Wayne's cowboy brother-in-law likely was the cause of this breakdown, and since he had open access to repair parts at his dealership, he took off to obtain the needed items while Dad did the disassembly of the shaft. This didn't take long.
Wayne had gone somewhere--lord only knows--and there were two full Grove boxes that needed unloaded. Never missing an opportunity to let me be Mr. Cool Dude, Dad told me to get in the seat of the Miller's JD 60 and get it hooked up to one of the boxes. At the experienced age of 12, it took me no time to wrangle the 60 around for the box hook up. Standing on the drawbar, Dad skippered me and the very heavy load to the silos where we commenced unloading. The MF-35 was connected to the blower. I got her fired up while Dad connected the hydraulic hoses from the Grove box to the 60 (the boxes were hydro powered). Whacking the throttle open, the Ferguson's little 3-cylinder Perkins diesel (what a sweet sound!) was quite up to the task of blowing the silage to a height of about 65'.
Returning to the scene of the crime with an empty box found Wayne's PTO killer brother-in-law in the midst of installing the shaft repair parts. Dad said that he was staying to help with the repair and told me to pull the other full box in and get it unloaded. What! By myself? Apparently the hesitation on my part didn't sit well with Dad, and he gave me a look that said, "Boy! What are you waiting for!" Who was I to let him down? He thought I could do this, so......I did it!
I popped along with the 60 and another load to the silos. Boy...some of those hills were steep! No problem going up--the 60 had plenty of steam for that. It was going down hill with who-only-knows how much weight on the grass-covered slopes that made me edgy. Just take it easy like before. No problem. No doubt my formative years on our Ford 9N when traction was precious all the time made me keenly aware of the hazards that lurk when going down a hill with a heavy load.
Once I got to my destination, Wayne was there, and we both unloaded the box so I didn't have to remember how the hydraulic hoses hooked up. I'm betting Dad sort of knew Wayne would be around anyway--another reason it was OK to haul in flying solo.
The remainder of the day went great. The chopper was fixed, and Wayne's brother-in-law backed off on feeding the chopper too fast. I finished the rest of the day by being the designated 'hauler-in' man. We put the 3020 on the blower for more performance and faster box unloading. The shuttle timing now worked out pretty good. The unloading and travel time was just right: when I got back the fields, a fresh load was being topped-off for me to take in.
What a mix of hardware on that Best Day: wagons. blowers, and choppers; a 3020, 190XT, Ford 8000, JD60, and my little pet MF-35. Best of all? Grown men having confidence in a punk twelve-year-old to safely handle precious farm equipment. I was part of a team, and in spite of their gruff exteriors, I was treated and spoken to like a grown up. Those times in a wee lad's life are priceless. There's scarcely a week that doesn't pass in my now middle-aged life that I don't think about that Best Day. ---Joe