Bale Handling With No Hand Labor (1950s) 

This was one of the most enjoyable things I ever did on the ranch. I loved bailing hay but I would usually bail all night. We had these huge radios that were on the fenders of the tractors and you could pick up AM stations from all across the country. You could pick up football games from the Midwest for example. Saw all kinds of strange stuff up in the sky In the middle of the night. Sometimes spooky stuff but pretty cool. But I have good memories of this whole system. Two string bails worked very well for the time. Worked well for us. We fed our beef cattle from two-sided feeders so pulling the belt wagon alongside the feeder and throwing them in by hand was pretty good way to do it. However believe it or not I can remember working with horses. Some of these tractors were damn hard start during the winter sometimes when all you had to do with a horse is hitch it up and slap it on the rump and it was ready to go. My grandpa was cheap or maybe you could say smart with his money whichever. But he was one of the last people to switch over from horses in our area. One winter during the depression he took on a job hauling hay from Idaho falls back out to our town for George Hart. He would make two trips idle falls a day with his horses load all the hay and unload by hand usually leave in the dark and get home in the dark and got paid something crazy like a dollar a day or something and then also enough feed for his horses which was still pretty good money back then. He wasn't desperately broke he kept our ranch going through the depression but any kind of job like that during the winter when you had less to do that would bring in extra money was doing. My dad was raised In a one room cabin until he was about 10. No phone, no lights, no running water. Of course this was partly because my grandfather paid for all of these for my great grandmother. But it's not that long ago that still had to do most things by hand. I can remember hoeing and thinning sugar beets. Then my grandpa would tell us to go ahead and hold the potato since we were already going. We had to rid his sweet and barley fields of wild oats two-row barley etc because he grew certified registered seed. We had beef cattle, sheep, dairy, and numerous crops. On the Snake River plane where we were located we mostly flood irrigated which was a whole bunch of manual labor also. I just barely stumbled across these videos but they are terrific. Reminds me of the evolution of our ranch and trading in manual labor jobs for more mechanization. Even after tractors and more equipment we still had a lot of manual labor. I'll be honest I almost cried when I started watching these videos. It's almost like a documentary of my childhood.

Love this. Thank you so much for the upload. I love these old films, especially the ones from the 50s.

I used to work at Farmhand in the late 70s ,we made the loaders in Green Isle Mn.

I had no idea this existed even before the skid steer loader was invented.

I had a Farmhand Accumulator and bale fork when I was farming. Had a John Deere 336 small square baler, an F11 loader on a 4020 to load the bales with the Farmhand bale fork. Went to large round bales later on. The Farmhand system worked well for me.

Fine old movie. Thanks for upload 😊 👍🏻😎

This would have been in 1960, because there was a John Deere 3010 in a coupe scenes, and there was a new Allis chalmers looks like a D series. Great video 🎉

This video is from the early 1960s. At 13:02 there is a John Deere New Generation series tractor. They were introduced in August 1960.

Yep it's definitely about labor cause in the 50s and 60s labor was plentiful and reasonable. Summer help was always reliable and enjoyed the exercise and money.

We had and still have a farmhand bale fork and accumulator just like these. Brings back memories of when I was little riding on the bouncy accumulator lol it had small single tires that would randomly go flat no matter how good of shape they were in. They always made my dad so irritated.

I bet my dad wished my great-grandfather had this. My dad used to stack straw for him and my great-grandfather made the Bale's heavy!

I think this may be very early 1960s. Some of the tractor models are from that vintage, particularly the wide-front John Deere (part of their New Generation of Power launched in 1960) and the late-model tricycle Farmall, which also looks like an early 60s model. The presentation/narration style is very 1950s though.

What’s crazy is still to this day lost people put hands on small squares. I know I do

Then came the famous bale wagon from New Holland revolutionary

Had New Holland Haystacker. Used a hay hand to load trucks and trailers when we sold hay. What a great labor saving devise.

There's a ranch featured in this video that's located in the Deer Lodge Valley in Montana

my grand father well my brother and i now. we still own 2 of those farmhand bale accumulators. one day we'll restore em and put em to work again. sad part is i dont think we own the movers or bale grabs anymore.

I never understood the whole dumping the hay in the field and picking it up later thing anyway. We always rode the hay wagon and loaded straight off the baler until we got a kicker baler. I mean seriously if you have the help to load it from the ground why not just put 2 guys on the hay wagon and load as you bale? There was 3 of us boys growing up on my now brother in law’s family farm, from about the age of 12 two of us were on the wagon and one ran the baler and we took turns doing each job. Or 2 of us would be in the hayloft stacking bales while the 3rd drove the full hay wagons in and unloaded the bales onto a conveyor and 2 or sometimes all 3 of our dads did the bailing and loading of the wagons. I sure wish we had one of these setups it would have been wonderful to us poor hot tired boys. Even though we used a haymow instead of stacking it would have been a real time and labor saver for us and years when we had both haymows full and still making hay stacking it in the sheds or outside covered with tarps would have been one less chore we had to do by hand.

2:10 "This is ridiculous" I've said similar things with more colorful words.

whoa check out that tire at 4:39 haha

Is the farmhand company still in business?

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1:32 quickly and safely er I doubt it, a feckin tricycle tractor with a loader has to be the most unsafe thing I've ever seen.

Looks good but I sure wouldn't use a tricycle tractor looks very unstable

Наглядное пособие для россии , что она еще не достигла даже уровня 50 -ых годов западных стран и америки.

This video sure couldn’t have done a better job of showing how to operate a loader equipped tractor, especially a narrow front row crop one in stupid and potentially deadly manner either. Was anyone else watching with baited breath expecting to see someone crushed when the tractor rolled over because they were backing up and running around with the loader up instead of lowering it while in motion?

Jobs for everyone. Good food. Clean air. Healthy animals. Ah yes, those were the bad old days with all that hand labor. What a joke. Now here in Wisconsin farms are run by corporations who call themselves families. The pollute groundwater and surface water with manure and chemicals and farmers grow huge potbellies from sitting on they butts and trying to figure out how to pay they loans with the current subsidies. Ahhhhhh, the bad old days - when farmers actually worked for a living.