AGRIMOTOR NOTES.
Page 19
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An Ingenious Acreage Meter. Adapting Implement to Tractor. Is Weight Beneficial ?
I came across, a few weeks ago, a rather ingenious accessory for tractors, which has been primarily de signed to avoid disputes and arguments of the acre age ploughed by any particular machines. It strikes me very forcibly that such a device will fulfil a long felt want, for the farming class are as a whole scepti cal in 'their beliefs, and need much convincing of the supremacy of mechanical ploughing. At least, that has been my experience. , Facts and figures are most necessary to bring argument to bear, and here is just the device to substantiate verbal information on these points.
This device, termed the "Aerometer," a most appropriate name, has been placed on the market bY the
inventor, Mr. W. G. George, Tunnel Hill, Worcester.
I am given tounderstand that it has been thoroughly tested by a number of farmers, who have, as a whole, expressed muchsatisfaction with its accuracy and -time-saving qualities. It will measure from one 9-in. furrow up to six furrows, either 9 ins. or 10 ins. wide. It is claimed by the inventor that the acces
sory can be fitted to any existing make of plough in 10 minutes. The meter is bolted to the plough and connected to the lifting arrangement on the beam of the plough, so that when the plough is lifted from the soil the device automatically ceases to register on the dial. The "Acrenieter" reads in tenths of an acre.
Apart from the value of the device for plonghing, it is obviously a useful fitting for corn drills, binders, mowing machines and the like. • It rather strikes me that a fitting of this nature would save Government
.tractor supervisors a considerable amount of time in checking acreage ploughed. The illustration herewith shows the component parts of the device.
I oironder if the average agriculturist fully appreciates the wide scope offered for the exercise of fertility and ingenuity of thought in matters appertaining to power farming 'I As more knowledge and wider experience is gained, the ability to profit from little tips and wrinkles will become apparent. At the present moment there is a, tendency' among British farmers who have been wooed to the new order of things to-be unduly wary. Thus we see diminutive machines hitched to powerful tractors, and a lot of effort going to waste. Now, appreciable time and money could be saved by attaching bigger implements to the machinp. This was brought home to me by Mr. G. Saunderson, who, on his farm near Houghton Conquest, was anxious to get his seeding done quickly. So he hitched a 15-row Massey-Harris seed drill to his 1012 h.p. machine. The drill was about twice the width of the tractor, and, being centrally hitched, naturally there was a pronounced overhang on either side. The problem was to avoid overlapping in the seeding. He surmounted this difficulty by taking a pole of the same length as the track of the seeder, and slinging it across the front of the tractor, so that the ends came in line with the seed drill wheels. To each end of the pole a chain of sufficient length to trail on the ground was attached. As these chains thus indicated the width of the seeder behind, the driver merely had to keep his eye upon this indicator, and was not called upon to worry about the implement in the slightest, the nearside chain, of course, being trailed in the light track of the seed drill wheel made when it passed over the
field in the opposite direction. In this way the field was seeded in equi-distantly spaced drills. This ingenious arrangement recalled to my mind another unusual attachment which I saw in Cambridgeshire, where the power farmer engaged in haymaking took a 30-ft. pole, and to which he yoked as many rakes as could be attached, the spread from end to end of the hitched implements being about 50 ft. With the power unit there is far wider scope for the practice of little " stunts " than is possible with the bay-and-oats motor.
One of the complaints (amounting in reality to examples of morbid anticipation) put forward against the agrimotor is that in the course of its continual running over the headlands it would badly pack the land and thereby reduce the crop that a given field would reasonably expect to produce. The other day I was looking over some newly-broken pasture land and was more than usually interested to observe that
only on the headlands was there sign of a fair crop. I was then told of a number of similar cases in the county (Kent): Local opinion in thal . county tended to the conclusion that the heavy rolling received by the headlands had dealt effectively with wireworrn ; but the official advice issued by the Food Production Department goes further and says that the rolling not only deals with wireworm out with the leather jackets. Reports are stated.' to have reached the Department from several counties indicating that these two pests, found in such abundance on ploughedout grass land, have done considerable damage to the corn crops sown thereon. In cases where crops are in danger, but have not been destroyed, double harrowing should, on the advice of the Department, be followed by heavy rolling,' the double harrowingbreaking up the burrows of the leather jackets an inch or two below the surface, and also bringing the pests to the light of day, when the rooks, starlings and plovers make short work of them. As lack of consolidation is the chief cause of failure of corn crops on newly-turned grass, it is almost impossible to roll too heavily, provided a sufficient tilth to cover the seed can be secured. So the weight of. the tractor or the land, particularly when newly-turned grass land is a great advantage, as by any other means eradica tion of wireworm and leather jackets is a long job.
This discovery goes to show how ready some people are to allow their prejudices to blind their judgment, and to refuse to make progress in consequence.
AGMMOT.