The March 2022 issue of Farm Collector arrived and I may have misunderstood the opening sentences in the article titled, “From Workhorse to Show Horse.” The opening sentence starts, “When the corn binder was replaced in the 1940s by the field cutter …” Corn binders were in use in central Vermont through the 1950s.
Dad was discharged from the Army in 1946, going home and starting a dairy operation on the family farm in Tunbridge, Vermont. He and mother married in September 1946 and I joined them in 1947. My first memories were of a team of horses on the farm and various pieces of horse-drawn equipment. A corn crop was planted and harvested by cutting the stalks with a hand sickle and loading them on a wagon. Later, Dad acquired a 1946 Ford 1-ton flatbed truck. He built a rack to mount on the truck to extend the length of the bed. He harvested corn with the hand sickle, loading it on the truck to haul it to the ensilage cutter.
An area farmer had a horse-drawn, ground-driven corn binder and in 1949 or ’50, Dad harvested corn with it, using the team to pull it. In 1951, Dad purchased a 1951 John Deere MT tractor. The pole had been cut off on the ground-driven binder and Dad pulled it with the tractor to harvest that year’s crop.
A binder, yes – but that Farmall M!
Prior to the 1951 corn planting, the field flooded, leaving sand deposits on the surface. During the 1951 harvest, the corn binder knotters malfunctioned. A rope attached to the actuating arm had to be pulled when the corn bundle was formed to actuate the knotters and discharge the bundle. An additional problem was the drive wheel lost traction in the sand deposits, causing the binder to plug up, requiring field repairs before harvest could continue.
Dad began looking for a PTO-driven corn binder of his own. An International Harvester binder was located in the equipment line of a pulpwood hauler in Randolph, Vermont. Arrangements were made to rent the unit during the 1952 harvest season. The pulpwood hauler delivered the binder to the farm one afternoon along with a Farmall M to pull and power it.
That was the first Farmall M I’d ever seen, and while my blood runs John Deere green, that M made my heart palpitate. Farmall Ms still do today. I’m true John Deere green until a Farmall M appears, and then I tend to stray. The corn was harvested with the International binder and the Model M. In 1953, Dad rented the binder again, pulling and powering it with the John Deere MT.
Taking a chance on a bargain
Dad was still looking for a PTO-driven corn binder. During the summer of 1954, he saw an advertisement in an area agriculture-oriented newspaper, “Tractor corn binder for sale, $75.” At the time, old ground-driven binders were selling for $85 and PTO units were over $100 minimum. Using the values expressed in Hemmings Classic Car Magazine to express 1950s value in today’s money, an old ground-driven corn binder was selling for approximately $850. Dad sent a postcard to the seller inquiring if the corn binder was PTO-driven. The answer came back: “Yes.” I accompanied Dad to go look at it.
The corn binder was in a dark corner of a machine shed. It was a John Deere unit, mounted on steel wheels and definitely PTO-driven. Dad spent a lot it time looking it over. The price was too good and the seller was acting like he would be very happy to move it on. Dad was trying to identify what could be wrong with it. He finally decided at that price, it was worth taking a chance, and he couldn’t find anything he couldn’t fix. He bought it. Once he got it home, he performed maintenance on the unit, trying to identify what might be wrong and found nothing out of place.
When the corn was ready to harvest, Dad hitched the binder up to the MT and started down the field, harvesting the first row of corn. The problem became apparent immediately. The binder wasn’t tying the bundles. Poking around in the knotters, Dad found a spring hanging by one end. He determined where the other end should attach and connected it. When he started harvesting again, properly tied bundles of corn were ejected from the binder.
An unorthodox solution
After putting his corn crop into the silo, Dad began using the binder on custom jobs nearby. In later years, when the corn binder came up in conversation, Dad would proudly proclaim that the custom harvesting paid for the binder in the first year.
Pulling the binder over asphalt roads, traveling to and from custom harvesting jobs, caused a loud racket and bent the steel wheels out of shape. If OSHA had been around in that era, he’d have probably been shut down quickly due to the noise.
One day, Dad came home from a custom harvesting job with two 1937 Ford car wheel rims hanging on the binder’s operating levers. He and my uncle, John, cut down the steel wheels and welded the spokes into the Ford rims. Mounting the binder on 16-inch rubber tires reduced the ground clearance for over-the-road and across-field travel, but it was much quieter and faster.
The day the milk check wouldn’t cover the grain bill
During the 1954 harvest season, a broken shaft curtailed custom harvesting for a short period. Parts were available, but at that time, the John Deere Binder Works was located in Canada and there was a long lead time to ship the parts through customs to central Vermont.
Dad took the broken parts to a machine shop and was advised they could be made, but it would be much less expensive to purchase them from John Deere. Dad allowed that he didn’t have time to wait on the parts from John Deere; he needed them right then. With the new parts installed, the binder finished the 1954 harvest season in custom work.
Dad harvested his own corn in 1955 as well as custom harvesting around the area. That year, the milk check didn’t cover the grain bill for the cows and it was time for a new career. Dad took a job with the Vermont Fish & Game Dept. beginning in January 1956. The livestock and stored crops were sold at auction in December 1955, the tractor with mounted equipment was traded for a 1956 Ford car, and the rest of the equipment was sold off in private sales.
A number of people were interested in buying the binder but no one could meet the $125 asking price and Mom and Dad wouldn’t back off. After several people made low offers, a local farmer came by and offered $110. Mom and Dad accepted the offer and he took it to his farm. How long it served him, I don’t know.
The March 2022 issue of Farm Collector was a doubleheader for me with the article, “The Big Dig.” My grandfather was a foreman on a road building project in 1957 and I used to accompany him to the job. I have worked off and on in the construction industry ever since and remember when models of the equipment highlighted in the article (manufactured from 1965 through 1974) rolled off the dealer’s lowboys as new. It made me remember my age. Thank you for the memories. FC
The first nine years of Richard Rowell’s life were spent on a 110-acre, 20-head (plus or minus) dairy farm in Tunbridge, Vermont, where he was exposed to a grandfather who was a blacksmith, farrier and wheelwright; another grandfather who was a horseman; an uncle in the lumber business and an uncle who was a large animal veterinarian. After service in the U.S. Army, followed by obtaining a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, he pursued a career in the concrete and ductile iron pressure pipe industries. Contact him at 2609 Linda Circle, Gardendale, AL 35071; rwrjdpeno1@gmail.com; (205) 631-2958.
Originally published in the February 2023 issue of Farm Collector.
