Ideas for new Pioneer equipment

[mitchmaine]

john, you got me thinking about turning the wrong way. if you took a truck rearend, wheel, rims and all, and dropped the driveshaft and got it free of the vehicle, the yoke would be spinning left. but if you spun the axle over it would reverse the turn to clockwise and be right for a tailshaft. it’s already reduced in the chuck, but you would need a clutch. maybe just a spline coupling or something. and you’d have a ground drive. you could even take a small tractor with a pto and use its rearend. put the pto in gear, throw the clutch, and use the tranny for whichever speed you would like??? possibilities.

[blue80]

Well I’d like to see a better fit and finish on a lot of the new horse drawn equipment. Prime and paint properly, both metal and wood; most of us have to store the equipment outdoors, sure would be nice to pass some of it on to our kids…

Kevin

[jac]

Hey Erika.. Sorry we got a bit sidetracked there:o So to sum up.. A light frame, perhaps along the lines of the old harrow cart, portal axle and adjustable track, which places the operator behind the easily interchangable toolbar or interchangable tools on the bar. A simple lift mechanism, mabey the footlift off the plow can be incorporated. All wearing parts preferably available in frontline agricultural merchants, and perhaps European options on wear parts if there is any diferences. Quality priming and paint .Also a bolt on timber arch for the fore cart.. An add on hydraulic accumulator, if it isnt to heavy, might be useful.
John

[mitchmaine]

my apologies too, erica. didn’t mean to get so far from the thread. i know leon and joe wengard pretty well and i own a lot of their stuff, and i also wish they or someone like them could survive up here. but the truth is even tho there are alot of us here on this site, a fabricator would most likely starve up here, in maine anyway, selling horse farm implements. they are right where they belong and we have to go there. makes going all the better.

[dominiquer60]

Its all right guys, I enjoyed the discussion all the same. Looks like weather will delay the trip, so I will hold of for a week to print this up. Thanks for the great ideas. I think this type of discussion could never be had without such a great site that DAP has become.

[Robert MoonShadow]

Erika…are they (Pioneer) considering a light riding (ala harrow cart) or a walk-behind thing? (Or both?!?) If it’s a walk-behind, I’d suggest some type of fold-up or swivel-into-place (as w/ a trailer tongue jack) transport wheels. also, if a w-b, perhaps a small scraper-blade and height-adjustable handles would be nice for people of varying heights – or perhaps similar to the Prommata type? When you mentioned the 36″ width, I thought “Why not make it adjustable, too?” – from, say 30″ to 42″?
As you can tell, I’ve spent some time creating an idea of what I’d like – and even moreso, after reading this post! 😀
Speaking only for myself, I’d be real excited to see some things geared for walk-behind use w/ a smaller, single animal = donkey/small ox/pony/etc. For instance, a bed-maker to make raised beds. Especially if I get this land deal – lots of the potential gardens/beds are old skidding spurs that are long and (of course) narrow enough to make using riding equipment problematic.
Of course, it’d have to be priced so that a small farmer could actually afford it, too. *sigh*
Please, please keep us posted on what, when or if they decide to do anything, will you?

[near horse]

Hi Erika,

I too must apologize as I think I’m the one that first “grabbed the steering wheel” and redirected this thread. Sorry.
I’m a little confused as to why there is a “difference” in the needs of midwest vs new england small farmers. Can you possibly expand on that a little?
Would it be of value to consider a seeding attachment (something btwn a Planet Jr and that 40″ walk behind drill that someone mentioned was on Craigslist)?

Once again – sorry about the hijack. I’ll work on doing better

[dominiquer60]

No problem Goeff, I like the tangent idea that was brought up.

The Pioneer guy noticed that there was a lot of interest in working single animals and teams of small size (2 smaller horses), in fact he wanted to buy my little syracuse plow for a model. Midwest farms tend have larger flatter fields and are often single cropped and make using big hitches and big equipment easier, think photos of HPD.

We have big fields in the Northeast but they can have some wicked slopes and many of them are owned by dairy farmers that use tractors. Many of us small animal powered type farmers (think Nordells from Cultivating Questions) have small odd shaped fields or if we do have the pleasure of some flat ground, we may have many types of crops to tend to there. Personally I have some flat with 40 types of vegetables and each crop gets treated differently, I also have some .3 A triangles and a larger “L” shaped thing that is a nice piece of ground, just hard to layout maneuver around. We need equipment that is adaptable to the slope, shape and size of our fields and can meet the needs of a variety of crops with ease of changing it around everyday. Also, many of us don’t have a lot for animal power so a small piece of equipment that can be used for a single or double is also handy.

I would love to have something as versatile as the old JD New 4 culivator that the Nordells use and have a range of modified implements (seeder, etc) or attachments for it. Promatta’s equipment is nice too because it is made for minimal HP and is very versatile. I guess that the new equipment in my mind, would be largely for cultivation, but like you mentioned It would be nice to attach one of my Planet Jrs or tine weeder to it. Since older cultivator parts are not always available, maybe you could have a choice of what the frame was like as far as what type of clamps can attach to it. For instance if you run into some old McDeering cultivators, you could have a frame that they can attach, or if you want a modern double diamond bar for new attachments you could order that frame with your equipment.

I am sure that there could be some folks in Ohio with small odd shaped operations that could use something like this as well as Appalachia and little hill side farms all over the world.

Hope that explains a little more,

Erika

[Robert MoonShadow]

You’ve summarized this whole thing up very nicely, Erika. 🙂 Geoff: A seeder…never thought of that one – it’d be great, too.
Erika – whether or not Pioneer does anything with this, I just want to thank you for making the effort to help improve things for us all.

[dominiquer60]

A seeder would be great. I bought a Planet Jr. with six units last spring and a 4 row stanhay, both wonderful tools. We took the Jr. apart, cleaned, greased, rearranged into a 5 row unit and had it working in the field with in 2 hours. It was interesting because all the units are set up on an 8′ Allis Chalmers G angled tool bar, and this was attached to a standard 3 pt. tool bar. 8′ is rather wide, I would like to cut it down to 6′ leaving a 2′ scrap. I’d like to find a way to attach the seeder to an animal drawn cultivator type tool using the 2′ scrap of angled G toolbar. It would have to have a lever to lift it off the ground or it would put too much stress on the seeder running it on the ground everywhere.

I really like to use this AC G as an example of a feature that I really like, belly mounted toolbar. Having the ability to watch the seeder working and to steer a cultivator safely through a crop is really priceless. That is what attracts me to a riding cultivator like the old New 4.

Just more thoughts to send west.

Erika

[jac]

Erika.. the 2ft of scrap you would have left… John Plowdens log arch uses the shafts as traces.. So could a hand lever pivot not be built into that principal to lift the seeder ?? if the shafts ended at the seeder instead of the timber arch and a small light wheel could be levered down to lift the seeder… ??
John

[mitchmaine]

what if you added a pair of caster wheels behind the seeders making your seeder a four wheel rig. keep it very light steel, just enough to sling or lift the seeders up into it and off the ground?

[jac]

Thats perfecto Mitch !! A long throw lever would lift them no probs.. Those seeders in the foto look very similar to “WEBB” seeders that were popular here for sowing turnip and other small seed..
John

[near horse]

Hey – you folks in N.E. don’t have the market cornered on odd shaped pieces of ground! I also have some pretty irregular borders. 🙂

[Roscoe]

Look at http://www.univecus.com/english/index.htm

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