ANTIQUE Horse Drawn HAY MAKING Equipment at Work - Big Spring Farm Lancaster County's AMISH LAND

[@dougstull4392]

I went to the same living history demonstration several years ago and it was great! I saw old hay making equipment in use that I had only seen setting idle in fields and barns. The Swiss Pioneers have a great club and membership.

[@AAdams-nd1pj]

This brings up memories, not all pleasant. SE Ohio in the late ‘50’s early ‘60’s , we had a neighbor that still farmed with horses, and put up “loose” , (unbaled) hay. My dad always “volunteered” my help to put it in the barn. Waist high Timothy, raked into huge windrows with the dump rake and loaded onto the wagon with a pull behind “hay loader”. My job was to move the hay around the wagon to get a nice level load. That long stemmed Timothy pouring off the loader would get all knotted up and almost impossible to move around. Sometimes I would just get covered up and he would stop the horses until I caught up. Much preferred square bales

[@klauskarbaumer6302]

Great to see somebody using the scythe. In our neck of the woods(or fields) I seem to be the only one still mowing a lot with it. And the gentleman even shows how to peen it. All the gentlemen are using an Austrian style scythe. I have four of them and love them. But the horse-drawn mower surely made it easier to mow larger areas.

[@johngroll9186]

Keeping the antique stuff this working, you have to love the Amish!!!

[@trailrider0194]

This is how things were done back when work was hard and people were honest!

[@jamesducey2685]

Thank you for sharing these wonderful seens.

[@halfwayfarmsandoutdoors3550]

You know it’s old when Amish have ‘old fashioned’ days!!!

[@paulruhl8614]

I believe the baler to be one of first w/ automatic knotters ,thus a great improvement to haymaking. Prior to that were hand tye.

[@klauskarbaumer6302]

I also really like it in this video that women are represented. They have always played a big role in agriculture and still do. And how nice it was when everybody worked together, not the lonely enterprise it is today with one person on the tractor doing it all, the mowing, the raking, the baling, the hauling.

[@SeattlePioneer]

Yes, but ONE PERSON! The reduction in labor is dramatic, just as you describe. I make my own apple cider straight from apples, but even then I use a KitchenAid mixer to shred the apples to be crushed for juice. That saves a lot of hard labor by itself, but even then there is a LOT of physical labor to pick the apples, clean the apples cut and inspect the apples, then crushed, squeezed, the juice then sieved of debris and packaged, the spent apples hauled off to be composted. I'm always impressed by how much physical labor is required to produce food ---reduced primarily by mechanization. That mechanization just as you describe, dramatically reduces the labor needed to produce food, and thus reduce the cost of food. And you could go back to 1835, before Cyrus McCormick's harvester, and imagine all the physical labor that went into growing, harvesting, threshing and winnowing wheat! Really hard for us to imagine.

[@klauskarbaumer6302]

@@SeattlePioneer I make my own hard cider, 75 gallons every year, but I do have a crusher and a hydraulic press. I have farmed with horses for many years, am in my 62nd year of owning and working with horses, sure, a lot of physical work, but mostly enjoyable and keeps us relatively fit. I find there can be a middle ground between backbreaking labor and total mechanization; our society has gone too far in one direction, and apart from the environmental cost it increasingly leads to avoidable health and social problems.

[@SeattlePioneer]

@@klauskarbaumer6302 Thanks for your comment. I have a hand crank cider press that makes about a gallon at a time. I used to get apples from a tree on public property on a street end, but that was pulled out to build sidewalks recently. One of the motivations for me is that I'm a frugal person and I hate to see wastem, especially the wast of food. So picking apples that otherwise would be wasted was something I found satisfying, but once you have a bunch of apples, the question is ----- what do you DO with them?! I found making cider used apples efficiently, since it took about eight pounds of apples for mwe to make a gallon of cider.. There are other apple trees around, but none I can pick easily. So I may be out of the cider business. Composting the pomace was about all I could do with it. I always figured that cattle, pigs or chickens would probably love it. This fall I raked up a bunch of acorns and have been feeding them to the squirrels, one at a time.

[@the_Falcon_fall]

Each video surpasses the previous one. Great job Thanks!

[@ДимаДругой]

Молодец играючи косит умеет косу отбивать да и косарь отличьный видимо хозяин фермер!!!😊👍💪

[@farangesan5427]

very nice video like me much, I like much love much Amish people have a life style like me much. thanks for video, have a good happy life all Amish people. with love.

[@Zeke-yv3nw]

Its amazing at all the technology that has changed in farming but the knotters on that old baler are the same as what is used today. Atleast for the most part.

[@SeattlePioneer]

The method devised by Cyrus McCormick to cut and stack wheat and grain in 1835 are almost identical to the methods mused today, and on virtually every mechanical harvester for nearly 200 years! And he hand forged the parts of his mechanical harvester with his skills as a blacksmith! And then there was the notable invention of the horse drawn MANURE SPREADER circa 1875! Almost the same as many engine driven manure spreaders today. Imagine what a boon that was to farmers! Before, that black gold had to be spread off the back of a wagon by two men throwing it out to the side, with another man driving the horse. And today the tractor has a hydraulic lifter to load the manure, so that men don't need to do that burdensome lifting. SPECTACULAR!

[@katisme5137]

I am not American but I am curious. Do Amish people vote in US elections?

[@LancoAmish]

@@katisme5137, some do and the numbers are increasing especially among the Lancaster County PA Amish.

[@katisme5137]

@@LancoAmish ty

[@adrianbew9641]

The standing baler was very inefficient and would of burnt more fuel than modern balers.😢

[@SeattlePioneer]

Yes, but imagine what the bailer replaced ---- loading loose hay, with several people pictured doing that in the video. Then hauling the loose hay to a barn where it was unloaded and lifted into a barn where it was stored loose. By contrast, the square bale packs hay far more densely and efficiently, into bales that a man can lift and move efficiently, using all the muscle a man can bring to bear on the task. And then we have the round baler, which bales hay in ways that can be moved efficiently by a tractor ---- more efficient than the square bale designed to be moved by a man.

[@bigronnie1419]

Bo

[@Bernie5172]

Cutting hay like that just cant be any good for the back

[@SeattlePioneer]

Hard physical labor using all the power a man can bring to bear on the task for hours at a time all day long. But consider that the scythe replaced the scycle, which required stoop labor all day long for a man to cut a handful of grass or grain at a time. The scythe was a dramatic improvement in efficiency and was, I suppose, far easier on the back than a sicycle. (I can't get spell check to spell scycle correctly for me no matter how many different tried I use!)

[@senadkurbegovic8083]

For ever smart people don't need stupid technology keep the traditional ❤🍻🤠