Harvest season stirs old memory

With the harvest season in full swing around here, it's timely to share an old memory as a youth.

A couple of years ago, I was killing time while a customer in Texas loaded up a truck.

Next door was a large farm implement dealership.

As I walked the lot, I saw grain harvesters that were well over $450,000 and up without grain heads. They easily could exceed $600.000 with full options and accessories.

This brought me to my youthful memory of the once ubiquitous New Idea Corn Picker.

This little gem was manufactured right near my hometown region just across the state line in Coldwater, Ohio. 

They came in primarily one and two row models and were famous for jamming and causing many a farmer to turn the air around them blue with profanity as he attempted to clear the jammed cornstalks from the open top separator.

 I personally ran a few of these machines, and never had the courage to try to clear the jam when they were running as I saw many old hands do. The reason for this was an experience I had the year my father died. 

I was five years old, going on 6. The old guy farming our land near the tiny burgh of New Pittsburgh, Indiana, was across the road from the house running a New Idea two rower with an old narrow front Farmall. The darn thing had jammed, yet again, as they were prone to do, often.

Ole Lester jumped off and with it running, attempted to clear the jam with his leather gloved hand.

Not a good idea.

His gloved hand was caught. As it began to pull him in, he reached in to pull the hand out.

And the other hand was caught. By the grace of god, the New Idea let him go and he only lost three fingers on one hand and two fingers and a thumb on the other hand that day.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was a valuable life lesson to me to never ramrod around running machinery and to always shut a machine down when attempting to clear a jam.

I know you all think it seems like common sense, but trust me on this one, if you’ve never run a New Idea corn picker you just don't understand how frustrating those things were to operate. 

I guess it shows my age that I know how to run one of those things, but after all we still had a team of oxen and a team of draft horses and two working steam engines on a farm I worked on as a youth. So the New Idea corn picker was actually as far advanced over those as that half million dollar STS S690 I saw in Texas is over the New Idea.

Progress my friends.

After all, the fancy green monster will gladly take a cool half million out of your wallet, but it's a pretty safe bet that it won't take the fingers off of your hands.

Happy harvesting my friends.