Some comments that have a little something to do with at least some of the topics of this conversation. I literally grew up on a steel-wheeled 1929 McCormick-D 10-20. I was just about 10 when I just took it out and started plowing with it. My father did not object. Today, I'd think OHSA would be all over a farmer who let his runty kid take a beast like that into the field. Those early tractors used lots of cubes because I guess the engineers were afraid to run them fast (splash lube and straight motor oils might have been factors in this decision). The 10-20 ran at 1000 RPM FULL TILT! You could make out each explosion if you were into that kind of nonsense (I was--I still get shivers when I hear an antique airplane with a radial engine pass over, and I just love going to plow days and listening to the music)(guess which member of my marriage thinks the other one has a screw or maybe two loose?). The 10-20 didn't have much h.p., but it had gobs of torque and just couldn't be pulled down in hard going. An F-20 on rubber that I often got to drive on a cousin's farm acted just the same way (big engine, long stroke, 1200 rpm max). When the H and M came out, there was scuttlebut running around that they just weren"t the tractors that the F-20 and F-30 were. True, IHC brochures always described the H and M as "full two-plow" or "full three-plow" tractors. My father didn't get around to replacing the 10-20 until 1951, when he bought a used H. That's when I realized the difference between a small high-speed engine (h.p., but low on torque) and a big slow-speed engine (modest h.p., but huge torque). For years, we used the H to pull the two-twelve Little Genius that my father had bought with his 1938 F-12!! Second gear only, most of the time. I can't speak for the plow adjustment now--maybe it wasn't as good as it could have been. Could have had something to do with it. Still, it was obvious that the H was a marginal two-plow tractor. Delightful to drive, and much more comfortable than its predecessors, but not quite up to the hype. I grew up on 140 acres in NJ, so we didn't plow huge acreages every year (dairy operation: some corn for ears, some corn for silage, some wheat, some alfalfa or mixed grass). In my father's early days, a farm like this would have a couple of horse-drawn plows and one horse-drawn disk-harrow. There were almost always TWO hired men living in the house, who worked for a few dollars a week and room and board. Plowing in the spring started as soon as the ground would permit, and probably went on for a couple of weeks, with both plows in the field. When my grandfather bought the 10-20, he parked most of the horse-drawn equipment and used the tractor for the heavy work (a steel-wheeled 10-20 doesn't make a very convenient chore tractor--like for pulling a hay rake or a wagon full of corn or hay, so horses prevailed for that work until the late 30s, when the aging horses were sold and my father bought the F-12). There is an old formula that seems to work pretty well: width of implement in feet times miles per hour equals acres worked in 8 hours. Example: two twelve-inch plows = 2 foot width. Pull at 3 mph (typical plowing speed in the "old days") and you can plow six acres in a day, if you dont take too many naps under the old elm tree, don't relieve yourself too frequently, don't have problems with the plow, can't hear your wife trying to get you to come in to unplug the sink or stop Junior's tantrum the old-fashioned way. With the relatively-small number of acres we tilled at one time, there was never any need to spend 8-hour days on the 10-20, and I don't think I ever did (probably 6). It was a brutal ride, up and down on those lugs all day, and the noise--music to me in those days--was probably not good for the hearing. As to acres plowed with a couple of horses pulling a riding plow, I imagine a couple of acres a day per man and plow would have been a good accomplishment. Don't remember the width of those little plows, so can't apply the formula. Been away from any active farm work for a few years now, but I still miss it. This palaver about nothing is really just a trip back in time, and I hope it's not too trivial.
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Today's Featured Article - An Old-Time Tractor Demonstration - by Kim Pratt. Sam was born in rural Kansas in 1926. His dad was a hard-working farmer and the children worked hard everyday to help ends meet. In the rural area he grew up in, the highlight of the week was Saturday when many people took a break from their work to go to town. It was on one such Saturday in the early 1940's when Sam was 16 years old that he ended up in Dennison, Kansas to watch a demonstration of a new tractor being put on by a local dealer. It was an Allis-Chalmers tractor dealership,
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