A deal for some small acerage corn farmer

Massey Harris had a self propelled picker as well. Seen a few at shows. I think they may have been older than Uni; and were they the odd-steering things?

The Uni system, which New Idea took over until the 1980's, started with a
mule' shich was the power train offset on a frame. You could bolt all sorts of implements on it, combine, picker, picker-sheller, snow blower, forage chopper, etc. Uni was kinda under-funded with the early yellow, then later bronze colored machines. New Idea changed them to red and started beefing them up, then turned into the silver color White as Agco merged everything together had at the end. They were mostly popular with sweet corn canning operations at the end, as ear corn dwindled in popularity and combines became too big for the Uni concept to keep up.

With the offset design, they were miserable in mud, all the weight on the right side, light on the right side. And the rear wheels set narrow and offset. For ear corn picking, add a 100-200 bu wagon behind, and you couldn't even turn to the left....

Dad had a bronze mule and an old yellow picker unit and an old yellow combine unit. He bought it for the picker, but it was miserable to use with no actual clutch, just a big grooved belt the clutch pedal would move a tightener - it would free-whreel down hills, and in our wet clay ground couldn't pull anything through the mud. He ended up liking the combine part of it a lot better, parked the JD 45 he had and used the Uni combine for beans. I got to drive it a tiny bit before it left the place. The picker untit had soft cast gears driving the snappers, when they wore out he couldn't find replacements in a year of searching, and so it got traded on a tractor, more or less scrap iron back then already.

When White/Agco was building them at the end, hydro drive, diesel, 4wd, they were quite the machines by then, but still had gotten passed by with the Red and Green and Silver machines, the small specialty markets of sweet corn and silage and the few ear corn users couldn't keep it going.

--->Paul

A lot of hands were lost in those things,.....they could jam pretty easily, so usually the protective covers over the husking rolls "disappeared" , and sitting right there it was too tempting to reach over to unjamb it, just this one time, 'cause it's getting late, etc.........

And today, row width would not be practical, even if you could find a planter to match.

geo

The guys who farm my place have a 36 row planter, and an 18 row picker head on their combine. They went to 20 inch rows this year. They were using a 24 row 36 inch planter, and a 12 row picker head. If they had the money they have tied up in machinery, they wouldn't have to farm.
When I retired, I had a one row New Idea pull type picker. They can pick and shell more corn in one afternoon than I could ear pick all fall.

When I posted this originally, I said small acreage farmer. I have read about guys wanting just a few acres. You are not going to get a custom harvester in on 5-6 acres.

There is a lot of 40" equipment around. Without irrigation, Id prefer 40". And for that few acres, it wouldnt matter all that much.

This country is full of 18 and 24 row planters and mostly 12 row corn heads. And 99% is under a pivot.

I haul a lot of this corn and one thing I have noticed is, they may cover a lot of ground in a hurry with those big combines, but the end product is much trashier than when my Dad and myself were farming and harvesting for neighbors.

Those machines may be able to handle all that grain, but it is so loaded there is not enough time or air to clean it properly.

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More wondering mind and more googling led me to of all things, a corn picker forum. ( that's all there is to it, corn pickers )

There a guy said he had two Ford 601 one row pickers for sale. I then googled for a pic and went to yesterday's tractor forum to see a pic.

Interesting

Ford 601 mounted picker - Yesterday's Tractor Co.

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" Do or do not, there is no try. " - Yoda

I agree that a larger machine would not fit a five acre field very well, but the difference between 40" rows and 30" rows is 25%. For me, a one row picker would do just fine; I could manage ways to squeeze an old-fashioned planter down to thirty inches or even less. And then I wouldn't have a single use tractor tied up to the picker(they are really hard to manage getting mounted and unmounted.....) I think many of today's corn hybrids could handle the spacing, with good nitrogen. In fact, you could use an "A" or "B" to plant, cultivate, and pull an International one row with a small wagon or trailer.
I would go for "compact".

geo

A or B WHAT?? Either one would work. JD would be on the higher hp side.

Stay with Farmall..... maybe wouldn't pull a loaded full sized wagon on a sticky clay hill, though......

We used to pull an International two row and wagon with a Regular.

geo

I would take a one row picker. Just do like Pawpaw did, work both sides to the middle. Or if he had to, kind of sacrificed 2 rows in the middle and split the field into 2 lands, then scrapped those 2 rows. I had much rather hook up a pto and a hitch than all that fitting and bolting .

__________________
" Do or do not, there is no try. " - Yoda

BobbyB
You don't want that one, it's missing the battery box cover.
I'll get it instead
just kidding
jim

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Be a leader not a follower

Yes, thats what I thought also. He hadnt got to turning out the cows into the corn field to clean it up quite yet, and picking out the ends and a couple middles was a lark to him after having spent 30yrs picking out the whole thing. Specially now that he had a couple tadpoles to kinda help.

Nother thing. After he got the 2 row. He only had to hook it up once, and unhook it once. As I said, it got to be a pain for him to unhook the Woods Bros, and then unhook the pto, then drive the tractor back to the wagon, hook up to it and take it to the crib. Unscoop and take it back out to the field. Unhook the wagon, hook up to the WB, and rehook the pto, back it up to the wagon. Hitch the wagon to the picker and go again. He might have done that from 4 to 5 times a day. He thought it was a pain.
With the 2 row, and the 38 A, All he had to do was unhook from the wagon, drive the H forward 20ft, kill it and start the A, hitch to the wagon and take it to the crib. Unscoop, start the A, take the wagon out to the field, unhook and park and kill the A. Start and back the H to the wagon, hook up and head out.
Writting it, it dosent seem to make much difference one way or the other, BUT, he was getting 50% more corn picked each trip down the field. AND he didnt have to hand pick ANY rows, That made the difference.

AND, since he had the A, IF he had had since enough to get one more wagon, he could have used us in our early teens to set out there waiting for him to get a load picked, He could have stopped and we unhitched from the loaded wagoin. he could have than backed into the unloaded one and we hitched him up while the other of us drove the A into line and the other hitched the loaded wagon to it and we took it down to the elevator, after Uncle Walt gave it to dad. We could have unhitched from the wagon, hooked up to the pto on the elevator (which had origionally had an engine that barely ran. Our next door neighbor didnt live there anymore and had alot of junk setting around. We found a pto shaft and brought it home. Dad wasnt to happy about how we got it, but he didnt mind at all that it fit and we disembarked the engine and used the pto. I still have it on the elevator). After unloading the wagon, unhooked from the pto, to the wagon and back out to the field, all without stopping the A. Dad wasnt the smartest at times. IF there was a way to do a job harder than it needed to be, thats the way he didi it.

OF COURSE a Regular could pull a picker and a wagon. It had about the same power as a 20, just slower.
Dad told me that he had once plowed around a 20 with his iron wheeled WC AC. I said that, if he HAD plowed around one, he had plowed around a Regular, not a 20. He didnt know the difference till i had explained it to him. AND he was in his 60s

The F-20 struggled with the mounted picker and 100 bu barge boxes. Mostly the few gears led to having to drive slower than ehat a person wanted to go.

The IHC 300 did good with the NI 2 row 6A pull picker and 100 or 200 bu wagons, tho it was a dry year for the 200 bu gravity boxes it was slipping by the time the wagons got full....

Neither the IHC nor the Oliver 77Super worked well with the New Idea 2 row 32x series picker and 200 bu gravity boxes, it just took more power. Works real good with the 60 hp Ford 5000 or the 85hp Ford 7700 tho.

I got 4 gravity boxes that work with the picker, one the hitch setup is longer than the others, doesn't fill as full.

It used to take a week to a week and 1/2 for dad, uncle, and one hitch helper to fill the crib with the old F-20, 2ME, and 3 100 bu barge boxes.

I did it all alone the year mom had heart surgery in 3 1/2 days with the 32x picker and 4 gravity boxes. But it was ideal weather and nothing broke for a change.

I have slowed down a little over the years, and the corn gets so dry I don't fill the crib allt he way up any more either.

--->Paul

How many acres? I cant imagine pulling 100bu through the field here. too muddy generally. It was a struggle for dads 48 H to handle it. Dads wagon held likely 30bu with sideboards.

We would run between 2000 and 4000 bu in our crib. Over the years that would be a different number of acres, dad got maybe 75 bu an acre back when, I'm pushing 175 bu an acre now.

Uncle had about the same size crib, but he filled it moreso every year with a little in snow fence crib, so he was doing 4500-5000 a year.

That was a lot for the F-20 to run through, man they had that thing for 30 years or more? The 2ME was pretty well used up when they sold it. Over 250,000 bu through it and I think they bought it well used?

One time dad was picking in a wet field and had gotten stuck a few times already. Uncle got there early with the wagon tractor, it had a loader frame on it - front straight bar - and so he drove up behind and lightly pushed on the wagon box to help - dad didn't know that sitting in the middle of the picker, scared the heck out of him because the picker nose rose up so he stopped in a panic. Which meant the whole rig was stuck of course, settled once it stopped.... Was funny to hear that story.

After school I was there to help that day, spent as much time with a chain as with the wagon pin. We had 3 tractors out there at one point, trying to get each other out. One of those deals, supposed to rain the next day getting late in the year, was only going to get worse.....

The 100 bu barge boxes were 100 bu of shelled grain - we probably got 50-75 bu of ear corn on them with all the sides. My 220 bu gravity boxes probably get 125 bu of ear corn on them - can't fill the back corners, would need a longer elevator on the picker.

--->Paul

Where I grew up, folks only planted small amounts of corn for feed. It wasnt a big cash crop like now.

I never had to handle any ear corn growing up. But, I was about 14 when dad bought his first combine, a JD 55 round back.

A year or 2 later, he found a 2 row corn header for it in a guy's pasture and bought it. We did about a 50% rebuild on it and put it to work.

I shelled a lot of corn with it. About that time, our corn acreage was growing. And we shelled for neighbors and friends since there werent too many doing it yet.

Moved up to a Massey I forget the model with a 3 row header and thought I had hit the big time.

When we bought the IH 915, I was on top of the world and by that time half of our acreage was in corn.

__________________
" Do or do not, there is no try. " - Yoda