Current Events

Iowa Tractor Boys

This is an image of an Iowa Tractor Boy taking round hay bales from a transport trailer to a storage shed. This handling equipment certainly makes this task much easier. The Flower Child has many memories of stacking sixty pound square bales on a wagon to be transported to a barn and then again stacking them inside the barn for use during the Winter for feel to Dairy and Beef Cattle. This handling system is certainly much easier and also quicker.

Every consumer of food stuff knows that for the Farmer to remain competive and still generate an income to remain solvent that new technology and methods must be employed. What you are viewing in the above picture is a crop duster approaching a Corn Field near Kale Avenue in Clayton County, Iowa. The duster is spreading a treatment to "kill the fungus that grows on the ears of the corn." This should allow a higher corn yield. The crop on the left is a planting of Soybeans and the target corn field for the duster is on the right side of the road. The crop dusting firms travel the corn belt and start in Texas and travel North to provide their services to the Farmers. Young Farmers embrace new technology in an effort to produce higher yields all in the goal of continuing to produce the most at the least cost to us City Folk. As a former "Iowa Tractor Boy," I can appreciate this concept. The dusting companies are from Missouri and Texas.

This is a picture of a "square baling rig" baling straw for use in a Dairy Barn. Note the automated equipment behind the baler. This system shoots the square bale into the high sided wagon. No longer do Iowa Farm Boys have to stack the bales on the Wagons. Note the Tractor and empty Wagon in the background ready to take the full wagon to the barn so that the straw bales may be stowed for use this Winter. The farmstead in the Background is where I was an Iowa Tractor Boy from 1941 through 1961 which was the year I joined the U. S. Navy. I always stated that if I had a nickel for every hay and straw bale I stacked on a wagon behind a baler that I would indeed be a rich person. I enjoyed the job of stacking bales on the wagon more than being the persons who placed the bales on an elevator to run into a tall barn or even the person who stacked the bales in the barn. To be fair, in my youth, my Sibling Sisters put the bales on the elevator and my Sibling Brother stacked them inside the Barn. They were younger than me and I enjoyed stacking bales on the wagon with the frequent cool breeze that often passed by. This was much more pleasant than stacking bales inside the Barn or even loading the elevator.