The Tractor
Mack and Queen were confused. The workhorses knew it was Monday morning and a work day so they were hiding in the bush as far from the barn as possible, over a mile away. When no one came to catch them by 10AM, curiosity got the best of them and they came up to the barn to see what was going on. Mack was a western import and wore a brand on his hip to prove it. He was a gelding( castrated stallion) so he was quite docile, but very smart. He had figured out that when hitched-up as a team beside Queen, if he held back a bit and let her go ahead, his end of the doubletree would rest against the implement they were pulling and Queen did all the work. In all his time at the farm, no one ever saw Mack lay down. He slept standing up in his stall and in the winter, the barn cat slept on his back to keep warm. Queen on the other hand was quite spirited for a work horse and she also had a mind of her own. When working in the fields, it was like she had a built-in clock and when lunch time arrived, she simply headed for the barn to eat and there was nothing you could do to stop her. The same thing happened at 5PM. Her timing was never out more than five or ten minutes. It did not pay to overwork Queen. If she got too tired, or she thought the load was too heavy, she would, all of a sudden raise her tail and squirt pee (don't get to close behind!) at the same time she would start bucking, kicking and backing up. Since horse harness is essentially designed for pulling ahead she broke a fair amount harness in her day.
When they got to the barn that september day in 1947 Mack and Queen spotted the NEW TRACTOR right away. They watched while the men huddled around it, trying to attach the new two furrow plough to the hydraulic drawbar While Mack continued to watch, I guess Queen realized she was RETIRED and decided to go and have a good rolling back massage. ( Have you ever seen a big plough horse lay down on the ground and attempt to roll over? They sometimes need to make two or three attempts before managing to get over on their back and then on over to the other side. Once they get going, they seem to enjoy it and will do it several times. I think it was the only way they had to scratch their back.)
In 1947, the war was over, food, gasoline and booze rationing had ended and the boys were home from overseas. Everyone was upbeat about the future and "modernization" was it. By then the old man had hot and cold running water with a four piece bath installed in the house and a new 110 volt hydro system meant a refrigorater
Right out of the blue, it was cool for any farmer worth his salt to own a TRACTOR. Tractors cost an arm and a leg and half the farm, but they were turning up like mushrooms on even the poorest farms. Ours was a Massey- Ferguson. It was painted grey on the hood and fenders and fire engine red on the engine, transmission etc. big back wheels with huge treads on the tires--very impressive! It was equipped with a hydraulic lift hitch system and a power take-off that would drive a belt if you wanted to run another machine like a woodsaw or whatever. They had also bought a new two furrow plough. The tractor was much stronger and faster than the horses. This meant the farmer got his field work done quicker, leaving him more time to sit and try to figure out why he never seemed to have any money anymore and how would the taxes be paid?
In our case, because of the stoney land, (see potato blog) much costly machinery was broken when hitting stones in the ground with far more force than when the horses were used. The stones that had been picked over the years were used to build stone fences around each field. It was deemed that the answer to the stone problem and relatively small fields was to hire bulldozers to (at great expense) to not only remove the stones in the fields, but to remove the stone fences as well. This allowed the tractor to sail right along in the now larger fields, getting the work done even faster. Unfortunately, the farmer overall only had the same amount of land as before and could only raise the same amount of crops. The big problem that became obvious was the tractor did not eat hay, but wanted expensive gasoline, lubricants, Parts etc. This required CASH. Since there was no more money coming in than before, this was an untenable situation. While farmboyinthecity is not going into the economics of the effects of the tractor on the family farm, suffice to say within 10-12 years of the tractor's arrival, the family farm, which had survived quite nicely for hundreds if not thousands of years, was in trouble and is now almost extinct.
Incidentally, Mack and Queen enjoyed many years of "retirement" on the farm as they were kept just in case the tractor didn't work. ( something like the person who does their banking on line but still keeps a manual bookkeeping record "just in case the computer doesn't work"(me).
next-Roll Your Owns
"If you wear shoes and use a flush toilet,
you are better off than2/3 of all the people in the world."
Joan Rivers 2006
posted by Farmboy in the City @ 8:33 PM
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