Russ' Vintage Iron

When I was kid, usually the first fieldwork my dad did every spring was to spread manure from our cow-calf herd. Some years it was in March, while other years maybe it was in April, but this chore for me was a sure sign that spring was officially here.

I have written about this in the past, but after my grandparents sold their farm, my dad rented a nearby farm. The old bachelor farmer, John, lived in the house and my dad rented the farmland and the buildings. Later, my parents bought the buildings and a few acres.

John's old equipment was still there, as was my dad's, so it seemed there were several of each implement. I remember there were also a handful of old manure spreaders.

A couple of them belonged to John and could have been horse-drawn spreaders originally. He probably converted them over to be pulled by a tractor, as he just had a John Deere A and B. I couldn't even attempt to guess what kind of spreaders they were.

There were a couple of manure spreaders which were slightly newer. They belonged to my grandpa first and later my dad.

One was a wooden spreader and had orange paint on the wood. I'm certain it was a New Idea manure spreader. I was told that was one of the manure spreaders my grandpa used when he milked cows on their farm, which was a few miles away.

Looking at photos of different New Idea model numbers online, I can't really say for sure which model it was. It might be a model 200, but I guess I don't remember it having a PTO shaft. Maybe it did.

At some point something broke with it and so the spreader was retired to the fence line. Since the manure spreader was wood and sat outside, it was slowly rotting away. There wasn't much left of the floor even back then, although the sides were still there.

The other manure spreader I remember being there was a metal manure spreader. My dad said it was an International spreader, but there was no red paint on the thing. It always sat outside, so maybe most of the paint had been lost.

Looking at the photos of International spreaders, I think maybe it was an International Model 100 manure spreader. There is even a photo online that shows one that was a greyish color like ours.

My dad had bought it from a neighboring farmer's farm equipment auction probably when he was still milking cows. This puts it in the early to mid-1970s, but it could have been later after Dad stopped milking.

This was the one my dad used through probably the mid-1980s. I vaguely remember him using it. I don't remember what exactly happened to it, but it was also relegated to the fence line by the New Idea manure and John's rusty old spreaders.

The one we used, which I remember, was a Hampton manure spreader. I think they were locally manufactured in Kennard, Nebraska. Usually, my dad would use our 1957 John Deere 620 to spread manure, but sometimes he used their John Deere 1961 4010 tractor. The 4020 had the loader and was also utilized.

One of our good family friends had a dairy farm on the outskirts of Omaha and had to relocate their operation to a town just north of Omaha. The previous owner of this farm had a farm equipment auction before they left, and this is where we bought the Hampton manure spreader. This would have probably been around 1985.

As I became a teenager, spreading manure was a job I could help my dad. He would get a load, I would drive across the pasture to one of the crop fields, spread the manure and come back to the cow lot to start the process again.

We still had the Hampton spreader when we moved to the farm my folks bought in 1997. It did come in handy to fill with larger items and then make the trek about 30 miles to the north.

The big shaft which ran the beaters broke one fall while we were spreading with it. That winter, which is probably close to 20 years ago now, we went to several farm sales in the area until we finally bought a Kelly Ryan manure spreader in decent shape near Oakland, Nebraska.

And that is the manure spreader we still use today. It might not be the biggest spreader, but it does get the job done.

The old New Idea and International manure spreaders got taken to the metal recycler when we moved up north in 1997. We sold the Hampton spreader on a consignment sale shortly after we bought the Kelly Ryan spreader.

Even with the broken shaft and some holes in the floor, it still brought $850. My dad said he only gave $400 for it in the mid-1980s.

It is not very often that you completely wear out a piece of farm machinery and you double your original investment some 20 years later!

What are some of the vintage manure spreaders which you operated? Drop me a line and let me know your stories. I look forward to reading them.

Russ Quinn can be reached at Russ.Quinn@dtn.com

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