TheBanyanTree: Life on the Farm - Innovation

[Mark Funk]

Life on the Farm - Innovation
 
Stories of life on a farm on the rich "corn belt" plains of southwest Minnesota during the sixties.
 
You might not equate farming with innovation, but during my formative years on the farm I was able to observe the affects of innovation first hand.
 
The "family farm" was settled in the late 19th century and the buildings and groves were full of examples of how things were once done.  My uncles entertained me for countless hours with stories of the way things were done when they were younger.
 
For example, take the act of "haying," which is a required task on a farm raising livestock.  Hay was a prime supplemental feed for cattle and a primary feed for horses.  Horses, in turn, were vital workers on the farm before tractors were in common use.
 
In the earliest days of the family farm, a scythe was used to cut the hay and hand rakes or pitchforks were used to collect and move the loose hay to a stack or other storage area.  Some of the old scythes still hung from the rafters of the machine shed.
 
Later, a horse drawn sickle and dump rake were developed and used for cutting and collection.  One of each sat rusting in the grove.
 
In turn each of them were replaced by tractor pulled or mounted versions.
 
By the time I arrived the "state-of-the-art" was a tractor pulled swather, a side delivery rake, and tractor pulled bailer self-powered with a "Wisconsin" engine.  The bailer was a major innovation as it not only simplified collection of the hay it improved storage as well.
 
Yet there were more innovations to come.  I remember vividly the day I was with my uncle, who was swathing hay.  I looked up the road to see the local implement dealer riding down the hill on a self-propelled swather.  He brought it out to demonstrate to my uncle, who he knew was progressive about the use of new equipment.  Soon the "pull type" swather was replaced with the self-propelled version, which was one of the first implements I learned to use.
 
My uncles interest in innovation and in understanding how things work sparked my own interest in engineering and physics.  It may have been "low tech" but it taught me valuable lessons that I can use in the "high tech" world.