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Machines like thia one hare revolutionized 

 onion picking in the South Holland area. 

 Cook county. It is operated by 7 men 



and replaces 30 or more workers. Ordi- 

 narily 9 acres com be harrested per day 

 by the use oi this machine. 



DEVICE HELPS GATHER ONION SETS 



WAR or no war, shortage of farm labor 

 or no shortage of farm help, there 

 is one of the nation's crops in which the 

 critical problem of getting enough help 

 to do the job appears on the way to solu- 

 tion. That crop is onions. 



Most of the onion sets used in the 

 United States are grown in Cook coun- 

 ty. New Holland, located in the south- 

 ern part of the county, has the largest 

 acreage. This year the total yield was 

 about 600,000 bushels. Most of these 

 onions are yellow in color and known as 

 the Ebenezer or Jap Variety. Others in- 

 clude white and some red types. 



Whatever their color, the harvesting 

 of this crop is probably the only job of 

 the kind which has continued to require 

 all hand labor. Onion sets must be cut 

 loose from the ground. They must then 

 be picked. Next they must be stacked or 

 windrowed to allow them to dry. Then 

 the dirt must be cleaned from them by 

 putting them on screens. Finally they 

 are scooped into long shallow crates. 



That is the way it has been done as 

 long as anyone can remember. But in 

 these times — with war cutting down 

 on manpower so that farmers are short 

 of help — thrifty onion set growers of 

 Cook county, most of whom are of Dutch 

 ancestry in the New Holland area, have 

 figured out how to save from 30 to 75 

 workers per farm, depending on condi- 

 tions, by devising machines for harvesting 

 their onion sets, according to Paul E. 

 Johnston, state farm labor supervisor, Ex- 

 , tension Service. 



Though there are several such ma- 

 chines in use, the one made by T. Ver- 

 duin, prominent New Holland onion rais- 

 er, and Cook County Farm Bureau mem- 

 ber, does the most complete harvesting 



job. Like many other farmers, Verduin 

 spent many sleepless nights trying to 

 figure out how he was going to continue 

 to plant, tend and harvest crops with the 

 shortage of help which is so general be- 

 cause so many farmers and their helpers 

 have been called into service. In the 

 New Holland area there are many fac- 

 tories doing war work. They have taken 

 many additional men, too. 



The idea for making a machine which 

 would do a complete job of loosening, 

 picking, gathering up and cleaning of 

 onion sets came to him on one of those 

 sleepless nights, he says. He proceeded 

 to build it on his place, using spare parts 

 of old implements and with the help of 

 welding tools. As a result of trial and 

 error Verduin finally hooked his new 

 harvesting device behind his tractor this 

 summer and found that, though it works 

 slowly, it does a good job — a better job 

 he thinks, than can be done by hand 

 workers. 



It takes seven men, or boys, to operate 

 it. The machine has three conveyor 

 belts operated by a special gasoline en- 

 gine. On these belts at intervals are 

 forked, finger-like metal claws which go 

 down into the ground deep enough to 

 loosen the onions, scoop them out and 

 deliver them to a screen on the machine 

 which is high enough so that five work- 

 ers riding on the side of the device can 

 help shake the dirt out of the onions and 

 see that they are fed into crates. One 

 man drives the tractor which pulls the 

 machine, of course, and another sits just 

 behind the hitch to steer the outfit so that 

 it follows the three rows of onions ac- 

 curately and in "floating" fashion to al- 

 low for rises and falls in the onion beds 



and thus prevent destruction of parts of 

 the crop. 



It is the opinion of Verduin that his 

 harvester is "the greatest labor-saving ma- 

 chine I have on the farm." His neigh- 

 bors agree. As a result he plans to 

 have several more made at a recently 

 installed machine and welding shop near 

 New Holland operated by Peter Lagestec, 

 former farmer in that area wfeo has had 

 considerable experience in welding in 

 war plants. It is expected that neigh- 

 bors will share these machines this com- 

 ing year. 



Verduin's machine will save 30 men 

 and boys work, state supervisor Johnston 

 says, and "shows what can be done by Il- 

 linois farmers to meet a serious farm 

 problem and lick it." There are several 

 other such devices which were tried out 

 this past year in the onion fields and all 

 of them are real contributions to the 

 cause of meeting the critical need of 

 farm help, Johnston added. 



One of the other devices referred to 

 was built by Mathew Van Dam who also 

 lives in the New Holland area. It also 

 must be tractor-drawn. Qne machine digs 

 the onion sets from the ground. It 

 also requires seven men, or boys, to op- 

 erate it. Another device is then hooked 

 to the tractor to windrow the picked 

 onions so as to permit them to dry. A 

 side-delivery rake has been changed some- 

 what to permit this pick-up. Then the 

 onions are taken to screen boxes and 

 cleaned. Crating follows. Unlike Ver- 

 duin's machine which does practically all 

 of this in one operation, Van Dam's out- 

 fit is much faster, as far as picking the 

 onions is concerned and can, if "pushed," 

 dig 1,500 crates a day, it is said. 



Farm Adviser C. A. Hughes in dis- 

 cussing this problem pointed out that im- 

 provements will be made on these and 

 other devices of the kind as experience 

 is gained through their use. There is, of 

 course, only a limited market for such 

 harvesters because the onion set acreage 

 is concentrated to the extent of 75 per 

 cent or more in Cook county. But it is 

 agreed by those who have seen some of 

 them in operation that if every crop had 

 a harvesting machine which would save 

 as much labor as these, farm labor trou- 

 bles would soon iron out as f)eacefully as 

 nightmares after a good nights rest. 



New AFBF Assistant 



A new assistant in the AFBF Wash- 

 ington office is James D. Parel, native of 

 Iowa, and for eight years secretary to 

 Senator Guy M. Gillette of Iowa. Dur- 

 ing the past four years Parel has been 

 employed in the U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture. He served as assistant to 

 Dave Meeker in administering farm ma- 

 chinery regulations. 



NOVEMBEE 1944 



