VOL. L. NO. 2160. NEW YORK, JUNE 20, i89i. "S' Serve?™’ 
raising a;nd harvesting corn and 
ENSILAGE. 
A Corn Harvester at Last. 
HE time is at hand when each must decide for him¬ 
self how much corn shall be planted, and how it 
shall be p''anted, cultivated and harvested. Not 
many years”since I raised in the West from 3,000 to 5,000 
bushels of com annually ; at the present time 500 bushels 
of ears, exclusive of silage, 
constitute my yearly crop. 
After long experience and 
much pains to try to discover 
how to plant, cultivate and 
harvest this king of the 
cereals most satisfactorily, I 
have come to the following 
conclusions: That the so 
called Western two-horse 
corn planter with concave 
wheels is very much the best 
machine that is now made 
for planting corn, and that 
no farmer who plants five 
acres of corn can afford not 
to join his neighbors and pur¬ 
chase a planter if there is 
none kept for hire within 
reach. Heretofore these 
planters have been used from 
Ohio westward; but now 
that the stumps are all gone, 
there is no reason why they 
may not be u c ed on any 
ground that is suitable for 
corn. I believe that their 
introduction would cheapen 
the cost of planning one-half 
and add a half million bushels 
of corn annually to the prod¬ 
uct of this f-'tate, while the 
cheapen'ng and efficiency of 
cultiva'.iop would be pro¬ 
moted. We have a great 
variety of, and many good 
planters, cultivators and corn 
plows, and all that is now 
necessary is to get the im¬ 
plement best adapted to the 
conditions. 
Up to last year there had 
been no machine for cutting 
and loading ensilage com. 
Becoming thoroughly dis¬ 
gusted with the “terrific” 
labor of cutting and loading 
upon wagons 10 to 15 tons of 
green ensilage corn per acre, 
I packed my grip last fall 
and started for Auburn, N. 
Y., determined to stay until 
I found some one who would 
undertake to construct some 
kind of com harvester. Of 
course, I first hunted up my 
old friend Allen, of the 
Osborne Reaper Works, and, 
lo 1 in a back room of one of 
the shops I found four ma¬ 
chines, in various stages of 
development, which it was 
hoped would successfully cut 
and bind in large bundles 
all kinds of corn. But I was 
in search of a machine to cut 
large corn, and load it on a 
wagon at one operation, and 
none of the partly constructed 
machines were “built that 
way ; ” so the attachments 
for holding the binder were 
removed and then and there 
the plans for a carrier were 
made. The machine, as seen 
in the cuts, was used to har¬ 
vest about 100 tons of ensilage 
on the University Farm, and 
did its work in a most satisfactory manner, without a skip 
or break, and five minutes was ample time in which to cut 
and load a ton where the corn was heavy. 
Where the rows are three feet eight inches apart and the 
yield 10 tons per acre, a gait of two miles per hour would 
cut a ton in six and two-thirds minutes ; if the yield was 
15 tons per acre, the team would have to pass over 792 feet 
to cut a ton; and at two miles per hour this would re¬ 
quire only 4 % minutes. The body of the machine is simply 
the self-binder with the cutterbar shortened nearly one- 
half. The method of cutting is changed radically, as the 
cutting is done by two disc knives fastened to the bottom 
of two upright shafts running towards each other; the 
material is forced up to them by the sprocket wheel revolv¬ 
ing on the same shafts as the discs (see Fig. 172). 
It will be seen that by this ingenious contrivance the 
motion of the cutting parts 
is continuous and not 
vibratory, as in reapers and 
mowers. 
The arms which extend 
well to the front, are armed 
with iron ends which pick up 
the down and leaning corn ; 
and sprocket chains, like 
those seen on the long car¬ 
rier. assist and hold the corn 
in an upright position. While 
the frame and other principal 
parts of the carrier are much 
like those of any carrier for 
elevating such material, the 
sprocket chains and other 
contrivances, by which the 
mass of heavy material is 
raised nearly eight feet, are 
unique. Fig. 173 shows the 
machine at work, and a loader 
on the wagon, which in most 
cases is unnecessary. The 
corn Is loaded lengthwise of 
the wagon in two tiers; the 
rack, It will be seen for obvi¬ 
ous reasons, is quite low on 
the side next the harvester. 
The rack shown is flat, wider 
than usual, and on trucks ; 
but an ordinary hay rack on 
a common farm wagon will 
easily hold a ton, if a few 
stakes and boards are placed 
at the sides, as shown in the 
cut. 
The corn would be some¬ 
what unhandy to unload, not 
being laid crosswise, if one 
did not use some brains with 
his muscle. A ditch about 
two feet wide and from a foot 
to a foot and a half deep, near 
the cutting box, into which 
the low side-wheels of the 
wagon can be driven, places 
the rack so low and the load 
on such a downward incline 
that the unloading becomes 
less difficult than when the 
corn Is put on crosswise. 
While loading, the wagon 
should be so driven that the 
high side of the load will be 
deposited first; then the corn 
will roll toward the low side 
by its own weight, as by this 
method of loading the corn 
which is to be removed first 
will not be bound into that 
part which is to be unloaded 
last. ( The ditch is my own 
invention, and the letters 
patent have been applied 
for; so farmers who drive 
one side of a wagon into a 
ditch to facilitate unloading 
should get permission to do 
so ) But laying all pleasan¬ 
tries aside, the ditch does 
greatly facilitate unloading. 
The harvester Is an assured 
success. I have never used 
any other machine with the 
same lazy satisfaction as I 
did this corn harvester, be- 
cause^ IZh ive tdetested for 
1 
“CUTS AND LOADS A TON IN FIVE MINUTES!” Fig. 173. 
