HARVESTING.-Many innovations have appeared in harvesting machinery. Several are shown on next page. A self-propelled one-man combine, 7 to 14 feet wide, has a front cutter bar so that fields can be opened, finished, and weed patches bypassed. Propelling and supporting unit is usually an adaptation of a rubber-tired tractor (top picture). The combine harvests all threshable crops in one operation. As the machine proceeds in the field the cut grain is conveyed from both sides of the swath to the center of the platform, then up to the cylinder and threshed. For harvesting rice, tires on drive wheels have large lugs-sometimes crawler tracks. For combining grain gathered into windrows, a pick-up device replaces the cutter bar.

HAYING.-A new way to harvest hay is the pick-up baler. Hay is cut by a mower, dried a few hours to moisture content of about 20 percent, windrowed, then baled with this type of machine. A pick-up device lifts the hay to a conveyor and thence to the baling chamber where a knife slices it just before compressing. Bales are up to 42 inches long and 85 pounds. Capacity ranges to 6 tons an hour.

Another new method of haying is the pick-up chopper. Generally operated by the power take-off from a tractor, it chops field-cured hay from windrow or standing green hay for silage. By use of a suitable attachment it also chops row crops like corn and sorghum. In field-harvesting grass silage, the unit is provided with a cutter bar and a special reel for picking up mowed material and to aid in getting the material to the chopping box, where the grass is chopped and conveyed into a wagon. It is then taken to the silo, dumped into a screw conveyor leading to a blower which blows the material through pipes into a silo with the regular stationary silage cutter.

Cotton Picker

POTATO DIGGERS.-Of several new potato harvesters, one is said to dig, pick, and sack potatoes in any kind of soil. Two men run it. A power take-off of a tractor or auxiliary engine furnishes power. For another type a rate of 400 bushels an hour is claimed.

COTTON PICKERS.-The first patent for a machine to pick cotton was granted in 1850; ever since, cotton farmers have been intensely interested in mechanical harvesting and inventors patented more than 1,800 devices, most of them of doubtful practicality. Wartime labor shortages, however, added incentive to making and using the pickers. Different views of one model are shown at left and below. Its mechanism includes rotating barbed spindles that pick cotton from each side of the plant, rubber doffers to remove the cotton from the spindles, vacuum conveyor system, and grates for removing dirt. Its speed is about 2 miles an hour. Its maker says it averages a 500-pound bale in 75 minutes, 40 or 50 times faster than average hand pickers. The use of a preharvest defoliant is of material aid to picking.

OTHER LABOR SAVERS.-Special attachments increase the utility of tractors. A manure loader (top picture) scoops manure from pile or shed onto a spreader. One man can load 20 tons an hour, five times faster than loading by hand. A post-hole digger makes fast work of a slow job. Machines are now available to harvest much of the sugarcane crop.

An attachment on a two-bottom plow

Several types of sugar-beet harvesters are now available. An attachment on a two-bottom plow (above) places fertilizer in a single band on the bottom of each plow furrow. A simple machine (at right) can turn out 300 pounds of shelled seed peanuts an hour, the amount a man can shell by hand in 300 hours, and do it better. Airplanes dust and spray crops, transport farm produce, seed fields, and protect forests.

NEW USES FOR FARM PRODUCTS Specifications for new farm Products and new ways of using them have resulted from research carried on by the Department, mainly at its four regional research laboratories, and under the direction of the Bureau of Agricultural and Industrial Chemistry. A quick glimpse of some of the accomplishments of recent years is given in these pages. Special equipment is required to test the merits of a new product or Process, as indicated in the picture above that shows a section Of the pilot plant at Peoria, Ill, where new ways of making alcohol from grain are tried out on a semicommercial scale. The 200-gallon vat fermenter also at the Peoria laboratory, is used to produce Penicillin in submerged culture.

New Orleans laboratory

At the New Orleans laboratory W. B. Strickland (above, left) and W. N. Berard apply a rot-proof treatment to cotton fabric from which sandbags are made. The effectiveness of the treatment is shown at right, above. The treated bag resisted rot damage, while the untreated one, under identical conditions, almost completely disintegrated. Another accomplishment of the New Orleans labor; is a semi-elastic bandage fabric. Made by a modified mercerization process, this new all-cotton material will bend and stretch with the flexing of a joint and will expand with the swelling of an injury. Medical authorities say this fabric has many advantages over the ordinary bandage.

The scope of farm products from which new things can be made is virtually limitless. At the regional laboratory at Albany, Calif., R. A. O'Connell prepares to test the merits of an experimental fiber of which poultry feathers are the main ingredient. A domestic source of tannin may result from research at the Philadelphia laboratory where Western hemlock bark, canaigre, and scrub oak bark are being used in experiments.