The knotter on our older Massey Ferguson small square baler had been missing more and more bales when we baled the straw behind the combine that fall. It was the late 1960s.
I am only somewhat mechanically inclined; I tried making some small adjustments to the needle arm on the side where the missed knots occurred. Following the baler instruction manual, I adjusted the twine finger too. A lot happens in the two or three seconds after the bale length metering arm is tripped and the knotting procedure started.
It didn’t help much. The troublesome side of the knotter missed about one out of six or eight bales. It was tiresome and irksome rebaling the mis-tied bale after picking up the wasted twine.
Sometime during the winter, Dad talked with Arch Kelm, a bachelor, farming in a big way, for the time, northeast of Bruce.
“You need a John Deere baler,” he told Dad, “A John Deere 24T baler! Never misses a bale and it will gobble up about twice as much as your Massey-Ferguson! Get one: you won’t be sorry!”
In the late winter, Auction Sale bills appeared on the windows or doors of fuel distributors, restaurants and machinery dealers. There were none listing a John Deere baler.
The farm auction sale season usually started in late March and continued through most of April, then stopped as spring field work and seeding began. In early June it started again, but with fewer sales.
There it was! A John Deere 24T baler in a sale south of us, south of the correction line, north of Daysland. I was determined to go; Dad was in agreement. It was about 20 or 25 miles from our farm, not too far to tow a baler home behind a half-ton truck.
Farm auctions follow a definite order. First to sell is the miscellaneous: tools, forks and shovels, chains, spare parts and junk from the workshop. Next come the household items and furniture, then the older or even obsolete farm equipment, then the main line of farm equipment and trucks. The tractor or combine is often the last item sold.
It was a beautiful spring day! Farmers are optimistic in spring, forgetting any bad weather events of the previous summer or fall.
I arrived at a grassy area near the farmyard, well-filled with mostly half-ton trucks. It was a tidy yard.
The auctioneers, having finished at the workshop, were near the house selling household items.
I walked closer, I couldn’t see the item he was selling but I could hear his auctioneer’s chant from the microphone he was holding.
“Last call on the old rocking chair, five dollars, Who’ll bid five, I’ve got four, who’ll make it five?”
We didn’t have a rocking chair. I liked the sound of “the old rocking chair” but I couldn’t see it.
But five dollars for a rocking chair?
I whistled loudly. The auctioneer stopped, looked my way. I held my hand up high.
“I’m bid five dollars,” he started again, “five dollars. Who’ll make it six? Six, do I hear six? I’m going to sell the rocking chair, last chance,” a pause, “I sold the chair for five dollars.”
I hurried to the clerk with the clipboard and gave my name.
Then I looked at my purchase. It was a large, very nice, very old-looking rocker, solid oak with wide, flat arm rests. It had a greyish-black upholstered seat which curved down in the centre like a large old enamel wash basin. The leather was worn and cracked. It looked like a map of China, the cracked lines like rivers running in every direction. There was a wide, padded, less-worn band of black leather partway up the back of the chair.
I tried it out and sank deep down in the worn-out seat. It was not comfortable at all, but the chair itself was sturdy, well-made, classy-looking. It would certainly need to be upholstered.
But five dollars for that nice old oak rocking chair? I was pleased.
I went to check the baler. It looked good, was well-maintained and had been kept in a shed. But the John Deere yellow paint on the pick-up was gone in the centre, worn-away by the hay and straw passing over it. It wasn’t like new but it was in good condition.
In the line of old and obsolete farm equipment I had walked past, I had noticed a small, light bobsleigh with a low narrow box and spring seat for the driver and one passenger. The spring seat was attached to a narrow wooden box that sat on the floor of the sleigh box.
The sleigh was old, weathered and beginning to rot in several places. The pole was missing or had broken, not far ahead of the front runners.
I didn’t have a team of horses, but the sleigh seemed smaller and was built more lightly than any bobsleigh I had ever seen. It looked cute and was built for a quick winter trip to town for a small load of goods.
The auctioneers had finished the household items and were starting on more miscellaneous things: posts, barb wire and some obsolete, horse-drawn pieces of farm equipment.
Soon they were at the bobsleigh. It wasn’t a hot item and started at five dollars, my bid. Someone bid seven-fifty. I bid ten. I had decided ten dollars would be the most I would pay. No one raised my ten dollar bid, so I bought the little sleigh.
As the auction progressed into the newer farm equipment I picked out the owner. He was an older, likely retiring, congenial-looking farmer, answering questions about his equipment posed by some of the bidders.
During a lull, I approached him to ask about the baler.
“Works fine, bought it new,” he replied.
“What about the knotter?” I asked.
“Knotter rarely ever misses a bale,” he said. “I only had about 30 cows so it didn’t get used too much.”
Dad and I had decided that $1500 would be the maximum we’d pay. I believe I bought it for $1300.
The auctioneer moved on.
So now to load my purchases and hook the baler to the pick-up.
The rocking chair was easy—I slid it to the front of the truck box behind the driver’s seat.
I backed up to the little bobsleigh. I stood looking at it and two farmers walking by offered to give me a hand.
“I think if we put the spring seat up beside the rocker,” I said, “then lay the box on its side next to it. I’ll have to separate the front and rear sleighs and load them, one at a time, beside the box. Maybe they’ll have to be piled on top of each other, but they’ll be OK. I bought the baler too, so I won’t be driving too fast on the way home to Bruce.”
The two farmers, one on each side, lifted, then jerked on the spring seat attached to the box. There was a sound like a bell jingle as the spring seat and the top board of the box was jerked up, exposing the inside of the wooden box.
We all looked inside. There were two straps of large brass sleigh bells inside the box. The leather straps were old, dry and cracked. The bells were tarnished, green. They weren’t a matched set: they were slightly different, but the same size, about like baseballs. They made a beautiful sound.
“Wow! I think you got a bargain when you bought the old sleigh!” said one of the farmers. “I’m sure the bells are worth more than the sleigh. I wonder how many years they’ve been lying in there!”
Even in the 1960s big old brass sleigh bells were rare. It was an amazing surprise!
We got the sleigh loaded. I put the bells on the passenger side of the cab.
I backed up to the baler after I moved the tongue into transport position. I got the pin into the hitch and put a hairpin through the hole in the pin. Farmers don’t often attach safety chains.
I got the baler, sleigh and rocking chair home safely.
Here are the results of the three purchases.
The sleigh never got used. It sat in the trees behind the fuel tanks and slowly deteriorated and rotted. However, I polished the tarnished brass bells and made them look like new on their old original leather straps.
Years later, after my brother Ben raised and broke to harness a very nice matched team of Belgians—Bud and Zeke I believe were their names—I gave the bells to Ben. He had a sleigh and hayrack and used them for giving people rides, especially around Christmas.
Bud and Zeke are long gone. I hope Ben still has the bells.
I heard there was a very good upholsterer, an older German or Austrian fellow, in Vegreville. I took the rocking chair to him and he examined it carefully.
“Dis is a ferry gut rockink chair,” he said, “und it needs da same kindt of ledder seat, chust like before. I make ferry gut ledder seat, all new sprinks, make new ledder backpacks— chair vill be chust like new. $80.”
The price took me aback—but I agreed.
He made a shiny new black leather seat with chrome or stainless steel buttons all around it and the new backpad. The seat curved up like a bread bun. It was very comfortable with perfect firmness.
As I write this on January 13, 2020, I believe that happened about 50 years ago. The rocking chair is in the small living room of our cabin west of Clinton, a few feet away from the wood stove. I like to sit on the still good-as-new leather seat in the evenings and rock while watching the fire or reading a book.
It’s still a beautiful chair.
Oh yes, the baler—the reason I went to the auction sale.
It baled and tied beautifully, but it certainly didn’t have the capacity that our friend Arch bragged that his baler had. It was an ordinary baler very similar to our Massey-Ferguson.
I saw Arch one day in Bruce. I told him we bought a 24T baler just like he had and it worked well but it certainly didn’t have the capacity he told Dad it had.
“A 24T baler? You got a 24T baler?! My baler is a 224T baler! It’s the heavy-duty, custom-operator baler, bigger and better than the ordinary 24T baler! You won’t find many around! I said 224T baler!”
So I bought the wrong baler.
But it wasn’t long before haying methods were changing. We traded the 24T baler for a John Deere 300 Stackwagon which made bread loaf-looking stacks of loose hay. However, they were very susceptible to blowing around in severe winds. John Deere quit making them in a couple of years.
Then big round bales became the way to make hay.
We ended our haying and straw baling days with a very good and fast John Deere 535 Big Round baler. That was 1995.
But I still remember the farm auction sale where I purchased an old rocking chair sight unseen, for five dollars.