There have been a lot of changes over the last 60 years. Equipment is now bigger and faster while fewer people are needed to work on farms. These things have changed the way farming is done and they have changed farm life. But steam engines, and other antique equipment, are still performing their last job, reminding us of days gone by.
See still images taken from this part of the film!
Technological Progress
The steam era was a lot shorter on the farm than it was on the railroad. Steam power had been in use before the Civil War but it was sometime around the 1880s when steam engines began to be widely used on farms.
The internal combustion engine was being developed at this time and pretty soon steam engine manufacturers like Keck-Gonnerman, seeing the way of the future, began to retool their factories for assembling tractors. By the 1920s the first tractors appeared on the market and as these new tractors caught on they began to replace their steam powered ancestors.
The tractor was a real technological breakthrough for the farmer. They were safer, easier to maintain and operate, and could perform a wider variety of jobs.
As engineers kept improving the design of the tractor they began to dream up improvements to other equipment as well. Eventually, someone got the idea to marry the binder and the separator, inventing the combination harvester thresher or combine. These first combines were pulled behind tractors, but it wasn't long before they were given a motor all their own and the self-propelled combine was produced.
This was the only self-propelled combine Caner Swann ever owned. It was one of the early models made by Gleaner and its header had a 10 foot cut (3 m).
Combines have changed a lot since the 1950s. The header on this combine has a 25 foot cut (7.6 m), small by today's standards but just the right size for farms in Robertson County. It can easily cover 50 acres (20 Ha) of ground in a day if the grain can be hauled away fast enough.
This combine is also used to harvest soybeans and, with a different header, corn.
And the farmer now has the luxury of working in an air conditioned cab, away from all the dust and noise.
A Closing Comment
The changes over the last 60 years have been dramatic and reach past the farming methods to touch the people and their culture.
The whistles on engines like Kay-Gee 1875 are silent. Their time has come and gone and they now stand as monuments to the past.
