Who invented the combine? Hiram Moor did in 1834. I thought it was a man named McCormick who founded International Harvester Tractor and later also a truck company. Anyhow, Google can straighten it all out. The reciprocal mowing machine was a great invention. It replaced the sickle which many people called, “The Missouri Back Buster.” It had a crooked handle and you swung it two handed. That was what farmers used to cut wheat, rye, barley and hay with before the mowing machine.
Then they made a binder where you cut and gathered the grain crop in bundles and a stationery thrasher separated the grain from the head. Like the early computer the steam engine took over 50 years to learn how to use. It was a monstrous tractor that ran on steam and lumbered from farm to farm with a crew to thrash the grain. Folks before then began by hand harvesting the grain then tromping it by driving animals over it. Then winnowing it by throwing it in the air with a pitchfork and letting the wind blow away the straw chaff.
All in all, farming has come a long way since those days and America led this machinery revolution. I bought a Case mower at a farm sale in 1969 and we put it together to mow hay. Cost me $10, I bought another like it for $2 and found all kinds of parts for it in the Famous Hardware’s building across the alley to keep it running for several years. The hardest thing to keep going was the wooden pitman rod that ran off a wheel to make the sickle bar go back and forth. I finally had three made up out of hardwood so when they broke I had a spare. You riveted sections on that bar that slid over plates also riveted. To spite a pillow, I sat on those old iron seats, which were not real comfortable though, as form fitting as the seat looked.
I mowed lots of hay with it and carried an ax, since I stopped the mules before sprouts that I figured would break the pitman rod. Chopped them down and proceeded with mowing. Then we’d rake it, loaded it on our trucks and took it home to stack. But lots of folks were glad to have you cut it or it would have become over grown. That’s why farm boys put up hay all summer.
There is a very famous joke about the guy who had moved to town and his father was up in his 70s and he still mowed all summer with his mules on the home place. He finally said, “Dad you have to quit mowing all this hay. You are getting too old to do all this hard work.”
“Why son I’ve got to cut hay.”
“What for?” the son asked.
“So I can feed my mules.”
He had a point, but many people had the same reason. Oren Looper who lived at Sunset found a new horse drawn International mower, for his father around then. I was out in a field on his place when his father was driving it. This was the last mower they made. It was so quiet and pulled so easy he used some saddle horses to power it. I was jealous.
Till next time; haymaking isn’t far off. God bless America.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
