Tractor heritage, news and features

The crown of the year

If you asked the average 30-year-old what a binder was, I am sure they would say it\'s a device largely used in an office that keeps loose papers together. If you asked me, I would undoubtedly say it was an old machine used for cutting corn. But then again I am not your average 30-year-old.

The familiar clatter

Every year my neighbours, Nancy and Ken Briggs, dust off their Albion binder to cut some corn ready for threshing at the two village shows that are held at the end of July and the beginning of August – the familiar clatter of this old machine is a joy in itself to listen to. I always go along to marvel at it working, I also like to lend a hand. Ken bought his binder from a museum in Barmouth, Wales, a few years ago; it was quite rusty but it worked, so he set about painting it in the lovely cream and red Albion colours. When Ken first used it, it relied upon forward motion for power but since then, he adapted it to run off a PTO which allows for better control in the heavier crops that are grown today.

I\'ve seen many black and white videos with horses or an old standard Fordson pulling a binder, I have also listened to many stories from my grandparents of them using such machines in the 1940s. My granny would speak of being sat on the seat and having to lean over to keep the one side of the binder on the ground, she also tells of being thrown off a cart fully loaded with sheaves because the young man guiding the horse pulling the load was going far too fast over some ruts in a gateway and the whole lot simply slid off – including my granny. She was in her 20s then and no real harm was done – except they had to load the cart back up quickly before the farmer came along and gave them some stern words.

Good teachers

In the last few years of helping Ken gather in enough sheaves for threshing I would be on the ground with a long pitchfork passing them up to someone on the cart. This year however being the youngest member of the group I was on the cart with Ben Corfield alongside helping and showing me how it was done. Ron Bebb and Chris Holden were pitching the sheaves to us and Ken was driving; everyone except me had done this job for real in the late 1940s, early 1950s so I had some good teachers. The sheaves are put on with the grain heads facing into the centre; the cut end was placed on the very edge or just over the sides of the cart. I was told that many people would throw the sheaves off if they weren\'t pitched with the heads the right way round. The next row the sheaves were put about halfway inside the first lot; this would in turn hold the lot together when the next layer was put again flush with the trailer sides.

Of course years ago it wouldn\'t be gathered in freshly cut, it would be stooked or shocked (depending on where you lived in the country); the crop was cut just as it was ripening this meant it would ripen in the stook. There were six sheaves stood up in a wigwam shape, my grandad again reminisces that he would stand the first two up and kick the bottom in with his foot then his father would do the same with the next two and Mr Knott the farmer the final two. They would go round the field doing the same, this highly labour-intensive job was done by everyone, from farm workers to children from the local primary school; and sometimes even workers from the towns and cities would come on their holidays from the dirty factories to help – and get paid as well.

Pitching sheaves

The stooks would then stand out until they had heard the local church bells ring on three Sundays, weather permitting, as my Grandad added that one year it was so wet that it started to grow again where it stood in the field, so they were left a little longer. Once the crop was ripe and dry it would be loaded and taken to where it would be stacked, with the top thatched until the threshing set came round later in the year – generally on contract as very few farms could afford their own.

It doesn\'t take long to get a good high load even when there are only two pitching sheaves and I could now see how far my grandmother fell off. We had a ride down on top of the load to the farm as no one had a ladder to hand for us to climb down. The second trailer we loaded was pulled by Ken\'s Allis Chalmers D272 and now I was on by myself with still two men pitching; the sheaves came thick and fast and I was laying them as quickly as I could, in the manner I had just been taught. As the load grew higher and higher and I was perched on top I had visions of the lot descending in a heap on the floor, I was very pleased to find that not one sheaf fell off and as I climbed down Ron Bebb greeted me and said I had done a good job – a complement I was very pleased with.

The two loads were then dry stored in a barn until they were threshed for the public to see. Ben Corfield once told me in the past that the public today love to see the old harvesting methods done, but are so blinkered by the romance of it all that they don\'t realise the hard work that was involved. A truer statement I have yet to hear. I feel very lucky to be able to get involved with how the harvesting was once done, before the massive combine harvesters we know today came about. But as with most things in life, the old ways weren\'t always the easiest but they were certainly the best.