Another rock machine and

[Steve in VA]

This makes more sense to me.

 

[rrlund]

Pretty common machine around here in potato country.

 

[jon f mn]

I wonder if that machine was a Dahlman made machine? If so it was made in my home town. I dont think they made many because it was something they came up with to try to keep the company going when potatoes went away locally. But when they were developing it they tested the .machines at our farm.

 

[Phill Tibbetts]

Wouldn't last long around here with the big rocks.

 

[moresmoke]

Wouldn't last long around here with the big rocks.

Not meant for big rocks. It was meant for potato sized rocks. When the transition was made from hand picking to mechanized harvesting, the rocks became an issue. The first one we had had a side boom for loading dump trucks.

 

[4wdtom]

This makes more sense to me.

Pretty neat!

 

[BobnUt]

wish I had one !

 

[NY 986]

In upland potato country here (Steuben, Allegany, and Wyoming Counties) it was discovered that the small rocks on the surface aided in warming the topsoil to promote plant growth. A few growers did a clean pick of a few fields then wondered why the potato crop was slow to come in the spring and looking sickly at times.

 

[Richard G.]

This makes more sense to me.

Steve, All the fields here were hand picked 150 years ago and many a rock dam was built in hollers.
If I had all those rocks in the video, I would be building something with them.

 

[Steve in VA]

In upland potato country here (Steuben, Allegany, and Wyoming Counties) it was discovered that the small rocks on the surface aided in warming the topsoil to promote plant growth. A few growers did a clean pick of a few fields then wondered why the potato crop was slow to come in the spring and looking sickly at times.

That's interesting.

 

[Steve in VA]

Steve, All the fields here were hand picked 150 years ago and many a rock dam was built in hollers.
If I had all those rocks in the video, I would be building something with them.

Me too. Seems too good a resource to just dump.

 

[Buckhammer]

We had a rock picker on the farm when i was a kid......... It was me! Dad drove the tractor pulling the stone boat while i picked rocks and placed them on it.

 

[J.Wondergem]

We had a rock picker on the farm when i was a kid......... It was me! Dad drove the tractor pulling the stone boat while i picked rocks and placed them on it.

Boy does that sound familiar. But he had the horse pull the stone boat while he went somewhere.

 

[MeanGene1]

Around Steuben county at least, when the potato harvesters came in, at first they had a crew that either rode on the harvester, or at a stationary picking station to hand pick out the rocks, as the harvesters weren't smart enough to tell rocks from potatoes. Haines Equipment in Avoca built potato and onion harvesters, also marketing to Florida, and soon came up with simplified "stone pickers" without the platforms for crew, that dumped directly into the trucks. There were piles of rocks in the woods around the fields everywhere, and the surface of the fields lowered a few inches. Another adaptation they did was on the trucks, removing the flatbeds used with sack potatoes and installing V-bodies with conveyors in the bottom, similar to a lime spreader, but without the spinner. Coincidently, my uncle Del Schutz had gone to work for Haines as a salesman and consultant, after being in my gramps' lime spreading outfit, so he was very familiar with the design of the truck beds. Another deal they came up with was adding a tag axle under the trucks, using big V-belts between the dual tires to drive the tag set. This is the lime spreading fleet in '58, uncle Del Schutz in the middle, and the big fella on the end is gramps Gene Schutz, who also owned Cohocton Valley Garage, IH dealership. Second pic is Del Schutz in his '53 REO spreader in Savona in '59

Haines Equipment Inc. Agricultural Equipment

Haines Equipment manufactures agricultural and industrial equipment. Haines Equipment specializes in standard and customized agricultural equipment applications

www.hainesequipment.com

 

[Russ from MN]

We have rocks on our property too, so after taking a trip to Italy I decided to build my own Pantheon, it doubles as a deer stand! The rock it's sitting on goes all the way to China!

 

[john in la]

My mind just can’t fathom a situation like that.

You can dig a pond around here and you might find an old petrified tree stump from 1000’s of years ago but you will not see one rock.
I haul gravel in to put on my driveway. While it is low maintenance because it takes a few years to happen but eventually the driveway will have to be replaced because the old rocks have sunk into the ground never to be seen again.

It seems most of you have rocks that move up to the surface. Where our rocks sink down more and more every year.

 

[jon f mn]

My mind just can’t fathom a situation like that.

You can dig a pond around here and you might find an old petrified tree stump from 1000’s of years ago but you will not see one rock.
I haul gravel in to put on my driveway. While it is low maintenance because it takes a few years to happen but eventually the driveway will have to be replaced because the old rocks have sunk into the ground never to be seen again.

It seems most of you have rocks that move up to the surface. Where our rocks sink down more and more every year.

Frost pushes the rocks up here, along with other things. This is a pick of how much the concrete outside my garage rose this year from frost, when poured it was even with the concrete inside.

The garage is on a footing about 2' deep and it goes up and down a couple inches some years. You can tell the movement because it's against the house which is on a basement that is 6' deep so it doesn't move much. So that same force pushes the rocks up. It will also push fence posts out of the ground if they aren't deep enough.