It would take a whole book just to list the other machines that help
different kinds of farmers. But here are some that are fun to know
about:
One clever contraption attached to a tractor grabs hold of nut trees and
gives them a hard shaking. The nuts fall on the ground, ready for a kind
of giant vacuum sweeper to come and suck them into a truck.
Crops that grow underneath the earth need their own sort of harvesting
machine. There are potato diggers and many others. The sugar beet digger
works in a particularly clever way. Machine fingers feel for the beet
tops. They set off a knife which cuts the tops off while other fingers
lift the beet out and put it on an elevator which removes the clods of
dirt as it travels. Once in a while the machine makes a mistake and
delivers a stone, or a chunk of mud at the end of the elevator. Men do
nothing but throw the junk away and let the beets slide into the truck
that travels alongside.
[Illustration]
A farmer always has to keep an eye on what his implements are doing,
unless he has a helper who rides along on machines like this big reaper.
When the tractor
[Illustration]
pulls a cultivator or a planter, the driver must turn his head often to
see how the work is going. For a long time, farmers complained that this
was a pain in the neck, and they really meant that their necks hurt from
turning so much. Some of them actually went back to using horses,
because they could either walk or sit behind horse-drawn machines. So
the farm machine makers had to change as many of the machines as they
could, placing them beside the tractor or out in front where the driver
can watch what is going on.
Tractors themselves come in many sizes and shapes. Some are built very
high off the ground so they can pass over tall crops without hurting the
plants. Some have four wheels that can be pushed close together for work
in one field and pulled wide apart for work in another. Some have three
wheels.
Mostly, farmers buy tractors the way people buy automobiles. They pick a
model they happen to like and then argue that it’s the best in the
world. Of course, a little light “cub” tractor is easier to handle than
a big one, but it can’t do the hard work of a heavy model with huge rear
wheels and tires. And here’s something about the tires--farmers often
fill them with water instead of air to give them more weight when they
grip the ground. In winter, these farmers must put antifreeze not only
in the radiator but in the tires as well!
[Illustration]
On enormous farms where very heavy work must be done, there are often
crawler tractors to do it. Instead of tires they have caterpillar treads
that give a better grip on the ground. Then they can pull a whole string
of plows the way you see them in the picture, staggered out behind.
This kind of tractor was first named caterpillar by only one
manufacturer. But people liked the idea, and they began to call all
crawlers caterpillars.
A caterpillar is powerful enough to push a snow plow, too. Or it can
bulldoze out a hole for a watering pond or a cellar for a new building.