Farm Bulletin: The Charms of Allis Chalmers

The right piece of farm equipment can make a huge difference in the workload on a farm. Modern farm equipment is expensive to buy and operate and is often too large to nimbly negotiate the tighter confines of small farms, whereas older equipment was designed for just that sort of use. Contibutor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm brings an old but still useful piece of small farm history back to life.

Michael Abelman and his son Aaron stopped by Ayers Creek for a few days in late July 2004 as part of his Fields of Plenty project. Rereading the profile a decade later, it is striking how much things have changed, though fundamentally we are the same farm. The profile celebrated the summer here, but we already had one winter market season under our belt. That spring we learned that the combination of spring break, Easter and Passover can kill a market. Lowest gross we have ever had; when vendors leave their cash box unattended there is not much to say for the day. Also learned that we should grow horseradish. Somehow, black radish does not have the same allure as a bitter herb for the seder, much as we tried to laud its many virtues. Our first planting of Roy's Calais flint corn was in the ground, and we were planning our orchard and vineyard.

Combining chickpeas.

After leaving Gaston, Michael visited Jennifer Greene's Windborne Farm in Scott Valley. There he fell in love with her old Allis Chalmers All Crop. It is a small combine pulled by a farm tractor. A combine gets its name because it combines the formerly separate tasks of cutting, threshing and winnowing seed crops, including legumes and grains.

Closeup harvesting chickpeas.

A couple months later he located a pair for sale in Canby, one apparently almost running and a decrepit example for parts. We went to see them with him, and it was clear the rose's bloom was withering as he paced around the two dusty, rusty hunks of machinery with their frayed belts, broken reel bats and rotting tires. We shared his reservations, even as he clung to the memory of Jennifer's machine and all it could do. The challenge of transporting the machines to Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island and repairing them dislodged the yearning.

The straw rack.

Apparently, the pathos of the bedraggled machines and their potential gnawed at us. Not sure what exactly happened to dislodge us from our rational frame of mind, but we purchased them. The machine is boxy with most of its drives on the outside. Like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, it is meant to be repaired on the fly with materials at hand. Not sleek or elegant, just enough of it to carry out the task well. Perhaps the idea opening up the list of crops we grow had some influence.

Corroded cleaning shoe.

Other farmers with big machines speak admiringly of the All Crop, with its mixture of flexibility, simplicity and economy. Encouraging the endeavor, not emulating it, mind you. They take their old combines to the Banks demolition derby, not the shop. They are quite comfortable in their modern air-conditioned cabs with stereo and computer controls. In less than an hour, they can harvest more grain than the All Crop can in a day. However, their machines take a full day to clean between crops, and the All Crop is clean and greased in less than an hour.

Bullet holes a point of pride.

Drawn to the machine, we forgot the first rule of purchasing equipment: turn over the engine to make sure it is operable. Apparently, someone tried to start the engine by using a lot of starter fluid (ether) which cleaned all the oil off the cylinder walls and the engine corroded solid. Neither Marvel Mystery Oil nor grease pumped into the cylinder would dislodge the corroded pistons. Perhaps we would have purchased it anyway, but it threw a disappointing money wrench into the works. The All Crop took a backseat to other projects until our daughter married Jonathan Hunt. In March 2008, he visited and helped strip down the machine. Later he found us an old driveshaft to replace the engine.* Relentlessly, he peeled away the excuses for delaying and pushed us to get it running.

Newly balanced cylinder.

Restoring farm equipment as a show piece is very different from a functional restoration. We want the machine to operate for thousands of more hours reliably, so pulleys, shafts and bearings need cleaning and, if necessary, replacing. Rubber and wood parts likewise. Tom Yasnowski specializes in locating or replicating obsolete Allis Chalmers parts, supplying us with the belts and rubber parts that had disintegrated over the decades. The cylinder and concave chamber where the threshing of the seeds takes place needed a complete overhaul. Yasnowski supplied replacement rubber-faced bars for the cylinder and Dave Naumann at Ernst Irrigation in St. Paul helped us locate a shop where the cylinder was balanced. It spins at high speed and, balanced with modern equipment, it runs as smooth as silk. Being an old piece of machinery, we deemed it acceptable to keep the bullet holes that appear when machines are unattended for awhile in rural America.

Bagger's platform.

We replaced upwards of 100 corroded bolts holding together the 10-foot-long straw rack, and saturated the dry wood with linseed oil. The adjustable cleaning shoe is where the seed is separated from the chaff, the winnowing task. It had corroded in place making adjustments impossible, requiring several days of careful cleaning and lubrication, and a layer of linseed oil on the wooden parts.

Jon Hunt at work.

A couple of weeks ago, Jon took his place on the bagger's platform where the seeds drop into sacks. We put in a couple of hours figuring out the fine points of combining chickpeas. As we tried to communicate over the roar of the tractor, the rattling of grain conveying chains and the thrashing cylinder, I might have well have been communicating with a wookiee. It was great to see the patina of a working machine return, that fragrant, short-lived gloss from the resins of the plants. Some of you may have picked up on the fragrance in the barley, and it will be present in the chickpeas as well. There was Queen Ann's Lace growing in the field, giving the grain a hint of wild carrot aroma. Thanks, Jon.

* Anthony clarifies that "the machine was equipped with the optional engine or motor. Motor was seized so we replaced it with a drive shaft or PTO (power take off) shaft to run the machine off of the tractor's engine."

All photos by Anthony Boutard with the exception of the portrait at top.

Farm Bulletin: Sotweed, Spuds and Tomatoes

Relationships in the plant family, as in any family, can be a puzzlement at first. Given a little family background, however, many of the quirks and habits—big noses and colloquialisms in humans, scents and growth habits in plants—become clearer. And who doesn't need some downtime every now and then?

Harvesting tomatoes leaves your hands and arms covered with plant resin that has a fragrance instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up around a pipe smoker, that of fine burley tobacco. Tomatoes and tobacco, also called sotweed, are both in the nightshade family, along with potatoes, tomatillos and peppers.

The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth's novel set largely on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, refers to a traveling agent, a factor, who purchased tobacco from farmers. Like Barth, my wife Carol's father, Peter Black, had a deep affection for the Eastern Shore, both for its history, landscape and nature, as well as its natural affinity for scoundrels. His country hams, smoked and dried for seven years or more, sliced as thin as paper and served on beaten biscuits, are missed as the holidays roll around, along with Thelma Johnson's persimmon pudding and, earlier in the year, the soft shell crabs. The blue crab is of its own kind and should never be compared to its sweeter West Coast cousin.

Just part of my yearly quota of astiana tomatoes from Ayers Creek.

One evening, as we enjoyed the cool breeze that came down Plain Dealing Creek and through the well-placed house surrounded by old pecan trees, we talked about another of Barth's novels when Peter digressed, explaining to us the second meaning of the "sotweed factor." Tobacco is an extractive plant, feeding heavily on the land and required a seven-year rotation between crops. Thus a tobacco grower seeking to harvest an acre of tobacco a year needed seven acres total, a factor of seven. With care, other cash crops could be grown in the rotation, but building the soil for the next crop of tobacco was paramount. The farmer could grow on a shorter rotation, but the leaf lost its aromatic quality and flavor and was considered worthless. The human factor would decline to purchase it.

A gorgeous, if unusual, specimen.

Closely related to tobacco, potatoes and tomatoes share this trait. One year, we foolishly followed a crop of tomatoes with potatoes and they were the worse spuds we ever pulled out of the ground, absolutely flavorless and unfit for our discerning customers. Diagnosing the failure, we recalled Peter's discussion about the sotweed factor, and now we make sure we keep seven years between crops in the nightshade family. Other crop plants show a similar propensity, though not as aggressive. Processors require three years between crops of sweet corn for the same reason; a shorter interval results in less flavorful corn.

As a general matter, it is a good idea to separate similar crops by several years. We also heed the Biblical instruction to leave the land fallow every seven years, though we are not strictly observant when it come to the exact frequency. The fact is, land needs an occasional rest. Until the middle of the 20th century, a fallow year was included as a matter of course in crop plans. Not only does the soil rest, allowing it to refresh its mineral availability, the fallow year also creates a break in pest and disease cycles. We had an email exchange with youngish organic farmer who was growing several crops of greens each year with good success for about five years, and suddenly she started having disease problems. We recommended a fallow year. Conventional growers can address those disease and insect problems with chemicals, but the flavor and quality of the fruits and vegetables still declines with intense crop cycles.

The other day, with our spuds not yet ready to harvest, we cooked up some fine looking Brand X certified organic potatoes and they were as bland as bland could be, reminding us of the nasty crop we erased with a plow many years ago. Organic growers cannot produce a good crop, even if they avoid disease and pest problems, if they insist on throttling down on the rotation and never leaving the land to rest. True, variety selection and the cultivator's competence are important as well, but they are for naught if the need for rotation is ignored. And on the seventh year, the land shall rest.

* * *

For those following the saga of the 1941 Allis Chalmers All Crop 60, Anthony has this update.

This past Thursday, All Crop #67208 had her first outing in decades (the "before" photo at left…new photo to come). With the large wooden straw rack swaying side-to-side, her gait has a touch of the rumba in it. She filled bags of hulless barley effortlessly, and we should have some cleaned and at the market within a week or so. The challenge of having her ready for Will and Jon's visit was met, and Will can tell you all about this amalgam of canvas, wood and steel at the market next week.

Farm Bulletin: For the Love of Allis Chalmers

Contributor Anthony Boutard, farmer, author and sought-after pundit on ag panels, is a die-hard romantic when it comes to farm equipment. He dotes on his pumps, breathes life back into abandoned forklifts and babies his prized Italian thresher through frikeh season. His latest project is a collection of metal parts (above) that he hopes to reanimate into a working harvester. (The rainbow bodes well, don't you think?)

We have been caught in the riptide of the season where the harvest of the Chesters continues apace and we are sowing our winter crops. Hence less prolix than usual. The seedling chicories, including our first re-selection of the late Treviso type, are emerging. Barely visible, they show up as a thin green line when viewed down the row rather than as individuals. To make up for last year's disaster, we have doubled the planting, such is the thing of a farmer.

Into this mix, we are restoring a 1941 Allis Chalmers All Crop 60. We dragged it home ten years ago and we have tackled the project bit by bit, with progress measured in its disassembly. Our son-in-law and his kid are visiting in late August, and the goal is to have it up and running by then. Otherwise we won't have chickpeas and barley this year. Every restorer's nightmare, nurtured by the hapless coyote in Roadrunner cartoons, is that a single bolt is forgotten and, upon starting, the machine collapses into a pile of rubble. If it is oddly missing during the Ramble*, that is what happened.

* This year's Ayers Creek Farm Ramble is scheduled for Oct. 12. Details to come.