Virginia citizen. (Irvington, Va.) 1891-1921, 1906-03-02

COiu, victory mas peeu won IN q
corn picker that plucks ears which
are husked aud delivered into a
wagon passing along beside the ma
chine, while the stalks are left in
the field. 1t takes quick man to
gather load Of ears by hand in half
a day, while the machine fills its
load in half an hour.
Hay and wheat are racing for
second place in the point of value,
aud last year the two together
equaled the corn crop. Fifty mil
lion acres are sown with grass, most
of 1T cut with mowers, massed to-
gether with hay rakes of the modern
side delivery type, carried into the
barn by a hay leader, and deposited
Ia the NEW with the automatic hay
fork to which is haruessed team.
Que farm using these modern in
struments put into the NOW 100
tons of hay between l and 6 O'Clock
in the afternoon.
In tue huge middle. west wheat
Kingdoms to all the large farms be-
longs steam thrashing outfit, which
consists of twenty-five horse
power, straw burning engine, driv-
ing 4 seiffeediug separator, that
will take grain as fast as two men
can toss the bundles to it, and
thrash, clean, and sack the grain, re
gisieriDg by means of an automatic
grain weigher every bushel thrasbed;
aud is wind stacker, which blows
the straw fifty feet away aud builus
a good stack without mans atten-
ton.
oae Of these separators, needing
but one man, to give it oil, thrashes
5000 bushels Of wheat and from
5000 TO 5000 bushels of oats in
day.
The revolution Of farming, how
ever, began with the grain binder,
which rapidly harvests, the machine
thereby increasing the acreage which
the farmer can grow. Through the
advent of the self binder came the
steam thrasher, the grain drill, the
gang plow, aud many other invalu-
able weapons of agricultural war
fare. The binder cuts a swath of
six or seven feet, and works almost
with Intelligence. cutting The grain
binding it into sheaves, and carrying
the bundles into piles, which are
afterward put into shocks.
For the farmer of the Pacific
coast, where the stalks are ,sts4z there
is combined machine which cuts
the heads of the stems, runs them
into thrashing machine where
they are thrashed, cleaned, aud sack-
ed, and the sacks deposited on the
ground. Sach a machine cuts
swath eighteen feet wide, aud is
drawn by from twenty to thirty
horses. A larger machine, cutting
a swath forty-two feet wide and
pulled by a traction engine,
cuts, thrashes, aud cleans the grain
from over 100 acreS day.
A farmers friend in need is the
gasoline engine, which requires only
a few attachments in order to pump
water, shell corn, grind feed, saw
wood, run the feed cutter and do
"an unlimited amount of things
which are hard to do by hand"
A farm truck which draws pillow,
Prof. Zinther thinks, may be the
next innovation. He says that if a
gasoline engine could be put on
truck so that it could perform the
work of the fields and also do the
numerous jobs about the farm, it
would be strong competitor with
horses for farm work.
The "man with the hoe" can
ruffle little strip of old world soil
and be poor peasant forever; the
man with the machine reaps rich
harvests from farms of 10000 acres
each, fills his granaries with gold
and exports, as did Uncle Sam in
1904, $960,0Oo.000 worth of grain
year.