Colt Case Ingersoll Garden Tractors

Some of you may remember I was trying to get this baler back into service. I had bought it at auction about 3 years ago with no information on it. I’ve been tinkering with it here and there. Well we had a perfect day to make hay today and I already had my test patch cut when I tried out the sickle mower so here we go!

I hitched the old rake up to the older Farmall M and made some rows. It’s got a lot of ware but it can still make windrow!
The hay was a little damp so I left it in the sun till afternoon. Then it was time to try out the baler. Who knows how long it’s been since it’s been in the field. I was a little nervous pulling out to the field. I got lined up and started baling.
Here is my first bale! I had to pull back to the shop a couple times to make adjustments, but I ended up making 4 bales off my test spot! I still have some work to do. It will miss a tying a knot sometimes, I need to adjust the bale size, there a little too long, and I broke a couple of sheer pins so I still have some adjustments to make, but we’re making hay!

He he, don't you like it when a project turns out working like this and is actually really useful!? This is great @JSinMO !

I would of liked to be there when that was happening, for the sounds and smells. Use to be all hay fields behind my parents house. Sure liked hay time.
All houses now.

Noel

Congrats on your first bales - proof of productive tinkering fixing things up
Thanks for sharing the photos

propane1 wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 3:34 am I would of liked to be there when that was happening, for the sounds and smells. Use to be all hay fields behind my parents house. Sure liked hay time.
All houses now.

Noel

My buddy worked for several farmers and got me my first paying job baling hay with him. Still have fond memories of that Loved the smell, not so much the chaff down the shirt though. Lunch and supper and a beer or 2 after the work was done and $2.50 a hour was big money back in 1976


Gordy

OH hard to believe he is making hay already They are small, but I still have snow piles in the shade of some pine trees

propane1 wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 3:34 am I would of liked to be there when that was happening, for the sounds and smells. Use to be all hay fields behind my parents house. Sure liked hay time.
All houses now.

Noel

You’d be welcome! nothing like the smell of fresh hay.

Gordy wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 11:40 am
OH hard to believe he is making hay already They are small, but I still have snow piles in the shade of some pine trees

I did this so early just to start testing my junk! I could cut the fields now and bale it they are pretty well ready but, it will be 3 weeks to a month yet before hay season really kicks off in this area.

We’re having great hay weather. Everybody is out bailing. Time for me to get in gear!

My first pass I spooked up a newborn deer! Mom was not happy with me! Pawing the ground and stomping around.
Hard to see in the picture The old mower did pretty good. I did break one of the pitman arms I made but I was able to switch it out pretty quickly. Other than my crappy driving leaving skips things went pretty well. With day time temperatures in the 80s and low humidity it should be ready to rake and bale quick!

The pictures really do show the nice weather. That must've been a lot of fun!

Eugen wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 12:45 am The pictures really do show the nice weather. That must've been a lot of fun!

Almost all of my equipment is is at least 40 years old and some of it is well over 80 years old. I do the best I can to maintain it but running this old stuff always makes me a little nervous!

When its all running smoothly though for me it’s about the most enjoyable way I know to spend a day. I don’t know of many people around here that still use this old equipment, other than for demonstration at a fair or tractor show. It seems there fewer people all the time that understand why I do all this, especially my age or younger. Sometimes that really makes me sad. I think my generation is probably the last that actually used this stuff on a daily basis when we were younger. I guess that’s the way it goes. You’d be hard pressed to find someone using a team of horses or steam engines anywhere but a show these days. I guess this stuff I mess with will be next.

There now, that’s my melancholy old junk ramble for the evening!

Good ramble Jeff. Perhaps if you were doing production agriculture you'd want newer equipment with dealer support and all that. I've heard though that farmers really don't like equipment that ties them to dealers because of the software that now runs on modern stuff. I like this old equipment myself and if I had some acres there would be a lot more tractors here. Keep up the good work!

Great ramble about using older equipment Jeff... there is a lot to be said about working with equipment you can fix yourself. It made me sad when scrap steel prices were really high 15 years ago - going into scrapyards to work on cranes and seeing all the rusty "gems" people were dragging over the scales so they could cash in on equipment granddad had left behind the barn or up against a fence in the back 40.

Finding replacement parts gets more challenging as they get older, but I'd definitely prefer to have a tractor with no computers on board... I do like some of the safety features on newer equipment though - especially cabs/ROPS - having a close call with a open tractor can leave you feeling very vulnerable - in a "shake hands with danger" kinda way - not just a bad case of sunburn

@Eugen @RoamingGnome thanks guys! And you’re both right. If I were really in production I would want newer stuff. Less breakdowns and safer! This stuff was all built way before OSHA. Shake hands with danger is right! But it can all be used safely if you have a some experience and are diligent about safety. I guess what is really on my mind is that it seems like I blinked and all this stuff was obsolete and just about every body was ready to put it all into the dust bin of history. I guess I’m just not ready to let go yet!

For today’s example of that thought, here is the 1939 Farmall M and 1960s New Holland baler I saved from the scrap yard. After a lot of adjustment and some aggravation the 3 of us made over 150 hay bales today!

That's a good number there, 150! If you think about it, adjustments and some aggravation in life is more rewarding than seeking comfort. There's also a strange good feeling about not letting these old tractors and implements go to the melting furnace. I have that too. nice pictures!

I thought I’d throw a few more hay pictures out now that we’re done with our first cutting. I ended up with a total of 200 bales which is pretty good for one small field. This has shown me that it should be easily possible to raise 2 or 3 calves and have enough hay to support them. Since we’re all hat and no cattle around here at this point, this hay went to market. 160 bales are already sold and I hope the rest will be gone soon. Unfortunately we are in the beginning stages of a drought in this part of the world. If I held onto the bales Im sure I could have made more profit later in the year, but I’m really not interested in taking advantage of that situation, I guess I’ll never be a big time business man but I sleep good at night!

It was quite a bit of labor but a lot of it was very enjoyable. I even got Herbie into the mix! I hope you all enjoyed the pictures and story. Thanks for coming with us, I appreciate it!

I have enjoyed both the pictures and the story, thank you for taking us along!

Great to see all your projects at work. Thanks for sharing!

With the weather forecast showing dry all week today was the day to make 2nd cut hay! I haven’t got a pitman are for the “new mower” yet so the 2N had to sit this one out. Hopefully it’ll get some cutting done soon. Had to wait for the dew to burn off so I got started about noon. This turned out to be a full days work! The mower just kept plugging up. Felt like I was on and off the tractor 300 times! with our summer of drought the grass didn’t grow much. I don’t think this mower like the shorter stuff. But it did eventually get it done. I don’t think I’ll get quite as many bales this time. Hopefully I’ll be making bale’s Saturday!

Thought I’d share a couple of pictures from raking hay today. It was an absolutely beautiful day to be out on a tractor!
Planning on making bales tomorrow!

That looks like so much fun!

Hay season for us is officially done. Here’s a few parting shots of “cutting grass”. The baler performed perfectly, never missed a knot! Which is saying something for a machine that basically came out of a fence row and was resurrected from the dead!

What’s a fella to do when he has over 160 bales on the ground and doesn’t have a bale accumulator or the energy or gumption to walk up and down the field to pick them up? Why hop on a Case GT of course! I kept having the feeling the 446 wanted in on haying so we went out to the field. I was nice to putt around the field and gather them up. The Case worked flawlessly and it made it much easier to just pull up to a pile and load them up! But now there is a problem I got on it today and it will only idle I’ll post that in my 446 thread.

Son was a big help getting loaded up! My even came out and helped scoop up the stragglers. It was a long day but now the tarps are on and we’re ready for our buyer to come and load out! Thanks for coming out with this haying season!

Nice tractors. Looks like fun. I'm amazed at how blue the sky is.

What a great day you must've had! Even Herbie got to play! Great pictures too!

That looks like a nice day out in the hay field!

Nice picture's Jeff. Garden tractors sure are handy with a blade on the front to push stuff around.


Noel

propane1 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 12:16 pm Nice picture's Jeff. Garden tractors sure are handy with a blade on the front to push stuff around.


Noel

Yes I was really happy with 446! It’s the perfect size for our set up. And it made the work much easier. Sure saved us a lot of walking! Luckily the bales slid fine on the grass, no broken strings.