Combines, its not that the older gleaners dont have sanctuary here. Modern farmer technologies have definately propelled farmers into a new level. Walmart isnt getting smaller and the American farmer isnt either. Alot of things in modern agriculture has changed and thats just the way it is. The rotor gleaners have allowed farmers to get over more acres faster and produce a cleaner sample and much better grain quality at the same time. The conventionals did a good job of what they were designed to do and they wont be forgotten quickly, but they just dont have the capacity for the future of harvesting. With corn being 1.30 we just have to get more bushels per farmer to pay the bills, in turn it means we have to get over more acres faster. Yes I hate to have to admit it, because all it does is drives our neighbors further apart and it gets lonelier out here all the time. You see farm sales and you know whats taking place, some small farmer is selling out and has rented his ground to a larger farmer which in turn is only getting larger. The small farmer isnt getting smaller, he is getting pushed out. (sadly) The older combines have the same sentence. Sometimes I drive by a farm and see an antique plow being used for yard decorations, I wonder if someday there will be farms so big that they display a gleaner G as a yard decoration. I guess it would be a tribute to the old machines, but they wouldnt even look right sitting there doing nothing but enduring the weather. I know they fulfil a heritage but I would rather see every state with a combine museum with old machines you could climb around on and jump in and out of pulling levers. Seeing young farmers saying to their dads, "I cant see how you could ever get anything done with these little machines." Having picture of them harvesting and scripts you could read and learn about the old machines would be interesting to the young farmers of the future, believe it or not they would probably learn alot from the past by reading things like that. I am 37 and I feel young and dumb compared to my dad and uncles yet today. But I promise you I can jump into the biggest machine with all those electronics and figure it out pretty quickly. I would probably be lost on the gadgets of the past. Someday young farmers wont even realize at one time you had to get out and adjust a concave or the chaffer manually, just like I think it was the old A's you had to reach outside the cab through a lil rubber squeeze door to grab a level to do something. like I said, I am 37 and I dont even know what that lever was but I do remember seeing it on a combine. Wouldnt it be neat if that combine was in a museum and a person seen that lever and could then read on a script somewhere what it was used forIJ I have had this idea for along time, it would just take alot of time and money to do something like that, and trying to find combines you could actually restore well enough would be another difficult task. Im sorry your discouraged about the path of these old machines, but someday I will be discourage that the machines I use now will just be a figment of my past. Father time is cruel on everything, he hasnt alot of mercy. It is long and winded no doubt, but I hope someone gets something out of this rant.
