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Start of How Do The Farm Impliments All Work?
Early farming relied on teams of horses. A partnership grew between the farmer and his animals, and the first steam engines and tractors were treated with suspicion and scorn. Some farmers purchased tractors as early as the late 1890s, only to be laughed at by their
neighbours. Horses would never be replaced by machines, some said.

During the First World War, farm boys enlisted, creating a shortage of farm labour. Farmers began to turn to tractors - they had a nation to feed and a tractor could work three times as much land as a two-horse team. The tractor became the new workhorse on the Canadian farm.

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Pully Threshing
2000
Sunnybrook Farm Museum Red Deer Alberta Canada

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Early 1900 Grain Wagon.
1900
Sunnybrook Farm Museum Red Deer Alberta Canada

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60 Bushel Grain Wagon

What we have here is a grain wagon that the farmers used in the olden days to take the grain from the separators and take it into their bins or else take it up to the grain elevators to sell. These wagons were pulled by a team of horses which were connected to what we call double trees and a tongue and the front end of a neck yolk. The tongue we have here right now in this illustration is short because it was cut to hook onto a tractor but the wheels you can see are all made out of wood and would fall apart sometimes and would have to be fixed up. But the whole frame is made out of wood, the main axles and that were made out of wood with a metal sleeve on them, so, periodically they had to take the big nut, you can see of the side in the middle of the axle there and put axle grease on them, so they could be pulled easily. These grain boxes, this one was designed for 60 bushels of grain, and the oats or barley or wheat that was taken up to the grain elevator, the little thing on top of the wagon there, that is what the driver sat on, in order, while he was taking the grain. The tool box on the front carried maybe a chain in there or a piece of rope and that is just in case something happed a long the road, which sometimes happened in the olden days because all they had were dirt roads, no gravel roads so things use to get stuck quite easy and that so they use to have a little help with them. At the backend of the wagon there is one of the end gates, they will have a turn buckle on it and it could be opened up and pull out and let the grain fall out the back because they use to take these to the grain elevators and they would jack up the front end so the grain would slide out the back. Okay you can see there is one small tail gate here that has been opened up partly and that would let the grain come out the backend of the wagon for the grain elevators. The farmer didn't have that, very few could do that, they had to get back into the wagon and shovel it out into the bins at the farm, which was very very hard work.

Filming: Andrew Brower
Filming: Alison Marshall
Voice: Lloyd Dickson
Editing: Jon Thomson

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Reaper
2000
Sunnybrook Farm Museum Red Deer Alberta Canada

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VanSlyke Plow Developed in 1905 patented in 1910
1905
Sunnybrook Farm Museum Red Deer Alberta Canada

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Van Slyke Plow

This plow is Frank Van Slyke, a blacksmith that moved up to Red Deer in 1905. Patented his plow in 1910. It featured a finger type mould board project film and shape angled corner order to cut the sod so it would lay right over and it flattened down, came equipped with an axe to chop the roots which could jam up the caulter in this region.
As you can see the wheels were all handmade, he took irons and cut the nuts out of the outside to adjust and tighten the wheels. This particular plow has iron on the side of the wooden beam. The first ones that he made were just a straight wooden beam and the wood come out of Ontario. You rode, sat on the seat on the plow, you drove your horses from there. Over 18 hundred plows were in use in Alberta by the late 1920s. By this time it was advised as the famous Van Slyke Plow.
I am very proud to be able to talk about this plow because it is my great grandfathers and we have been quite close family down through the generations. My grandmother, when he was building these plows she drove the horses on the treadmill to run the equipment in the shop where he done the blacksmith work.

Filming: Jordan Hollingsworth
Voice: Frank Johnson
Editing: Jon Thomson

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IHC Hay Press 1910
1910
Sunnybrook Farm Museum Red Deer Alberta Canada

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IHC Hay Press

We are dealing with an old machine that was developed in the early 1900s, probably around 1910 there about, and at that time it was a very modern machine, very labour intensive, but never the less it served a purpose that we needed at that time. The machine was first of all to set it up for operations position so the horses could power it, all the wheels were removed and the machine was set right down on the ground level and then the four horses that were used to power it were two horses at a time and they were operated for about two hours. Then they were changed because it was very monotonous when they were hooked up to that beam that they moved around and around in that continuous circle and it got very monotonous for the team and also the operator. Now a long with that it required approximately six men to work the machine to capacity then that required one man to feed it up on top and two men to supply the hay so he can feed the machine in time with the operation of the machine. Now that was three men, no there was two, one on each side of the machine that passed the wire through between what they had blocks called blocks and they were put in the appropriate time to create the size of bale that was required and these blocks were slotted on both sides, crossways of the machine. One operator on each side, one would feed the wire through the block to the other side and the man on the other side would take it through and feed it back through the block behind. There were two of these bands that went through and so there were two strands of wire of each bale to hold it safe when it came though the press. Now these bales were approximately 100 lbs. each, they were heavy. The reason they were so heavy, so dense and packed was that often people shipped in boxcars. Now these boxcars on the railways were just like a box and a door on each side and when the car was loaded, which was approximately 40 tons, maybe 30-40 tons, the bales had to be packed right tightly in order to get sufient weight into the boxcar because you had to pay so much for the car and if you didn't have the manumum weight in there you were short changing yourself, so that is why the bales were packed so tight and so heavy.

Filming: Andrew Brower
Filming: Alison Marshall
Voice: George Braithwaite
Editing; Jon Thomson

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Vintage Tractors
1919
Sunnybrook Farm Museum Red Deer Alberta Canada

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Tractors

The Tractors replaced horses as a source of power. Actually the first of the tractors did appear just after the turn of the century. One of the first tractors that came into Red Deer was actually owned by the Bowers, a 1906 model and it was believed to be one of the first gasoline powered tractors in Western Canada. The first tractors replaced the horse by pulling the farm equipment attached to the draw bar. The next step was to attach a pulley to the engine, the engine being the source of power. The engine power was then transferred to another machine using a belt. A third method of transferring power to another machine, the machine that would be attached behind the tractor was the power take off. Power take-offs did not become too common until about the mid 1940s.
To take a look at starting the tractor it is a little different than starting up a car in this day and age. The early tractors had to be cranked; the crack at the front of the tractor would engage the motor to get it started. A little later on into 1940s electric starters did begin to appear. In operating the tractor there was a clutch, the gears, gear shift and the brake as you can see there are just ahead of the seat of this tractor. The brakes were usually a hand brake later on, the foot brake did appear. Most of the tractors used gasoline or kerosene as fuel. It was later on that diesel became common as a fuel. The wheels on our tractors started out as steel wheels, they had lugs attached to the rear wheel for added traction. The steel wheels did have definite advantages, especially when breaking land. Rubber tires appeared about 1932. The Allis Chalmers that we see here arrived in Red Deer 1932, it was one of the first models that had rubber and it should be noted that rubber tires were generally optional until about 1945. The 1932 Allis Chalmers came with both rubber and steel wheels of course rubber was not much good out breaking because you were always ending up with a flat tire.

Filming: Kate Allan
Filming; Alison Marshall
Starting the Tractor: Ernie Gill
Voice: Kevin Majeau

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Baling
1960
Central Alberta Canada

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How the Allis Chalmbers 60 All Harvester 1936 Combine works.
1936
Sunnybrook Farm Museum Red Deer Alberta Canada

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All-Crop Allis Chalmers Combine

This is a 1936 model 60 Allis Chamers combine. One of the first mass produced combines and was a very successful machine. Interesting part of it is that it's name the 60 combine referred to the width of the cutter which was 5 feet or 60 inches and with a straight through combine the grain as it was cut it went straight up and there was a full width cylinder that separated the grain right away. That was unique at that time. This one is equipped with a pick - up to do the swathed grain. If you notice at the top there is a little finger hanging down and as the machine operating that wend backward and forward and spread the s2wath out so that it went through the cylinder more evenly. The other unique part of it is that the threshing part went straight through but the separation from the grain from the straw went at right angle in other words cross ways so this part of the back here is the separator where after the grain came up through and through the cylinder went into this area and the cylinder is right there to the left of the opening. And then the straw went in on these shakers and went separated through with the grain falling down underneath and the straw going on and exiting over on the other side of the machine, which was unique. Most combines the grain came up and was threshed through the separator and it was exited out the back, this one was a cross draft. This little machine was quite small but did a fairly good job was exceptionally good with fine grass seeds and things like that but used extensionally in the area at the time and proved to be a very good machine. The power for the machine and this one in particular is a power take off where the tractor provided though this power shaft and operated the machine through there. Many some of them also had a motor mounted right in this area, ran off its own self propelled motor. The grain of course, we talked about the threshing would come up into the tank then would exit through here. The operator would stop the combine himself and put this auger into motion and dump the grain out into a truck very small hopper did not hold a lot of grain. Some farmers would build a wooden platform around the top, so they could add another foot or so of capacity through the tank. Another interesting part is that this wheel has a gear on it and a chain that provides power to turn the wheels that help with the cutting. As you move a wheel you can see it moving over there, so the wheels would turn at the same speed as the combine traveled across the crop. If you went faster then the wheels would turn faster and do a better cutting job, as you slowed down the wheels slowed down. Another unique feature of this machine

Filming: Marty Haldane
Filming: Alison Marshall
Voice: George Campbell
Editing: Jon Thomson