Dust Bowl Tractors

Jahaze · Sep 3, 2009

I watched a show on the History Channel last night about the Dust Bowl, it was very informative, with quite a few photos of great old tractors. Some of the pictures with the tractors burried in top soil got me wondering if anyone has ever found a tractor by digging in a mound of dirt, only to find a lost treasure out on the plains. Does anyone have any stories?

Enjoy, Joe

Goose · Sep 3, 2009

Can't tell any stories about finding tractors, but our daughter loaned me a great book about the Dust Bowl and its causes. I can't find the book, so she must have reclaimed it. With a BS in History, she funnels me all these great books about everything from the Civil War, to the Dust Bowl, to Cold War submarine espionage, to a biography of Doc Holliday, to biographies of the Earp brothers, etc. (You have to know her to understand why a 20-something gal would be interested in Old West gunfighters).

Plowing up all of that native prairie was one of the greatest acts of sheer stupidity of the 20th Century, all because of greed over good wheat prices. Twelve year old boys were making big money by borrowing a tractor and putting in 12 hour days plowing up section after section. By the time the mistake was realized, it was too late.

greenbeanman in Kansas · Sep 3, 2009

There was much more to the dust bowl than plowing up the prairie.

Enter into the picture also coyotes, rabbits, and grasshoppers.

Below is a photo showing rabbits during a rabbit drive. My mothers old diaries tell of many rabbit drives in which 6,000 to 16,000 rabbits would be slaughtered at each one. Kill the coyotes off and the rabbits thrive. Rabbits thrive and the pastures as well as any other vegetation is eaten.

The old tales also tell of grasshoppers eating the wooden handles of tools left outside.
Western Kansas Rabbit Drive photo.

waltdavies · Sep 3, 2009

I watched that show to an I came to the conclusion that the dust bowl was mainly cause by the fact that it was the worst drought in history. On a normal year they farm just as much without the dust bowl.
I wonder why things like this are always blamed on mans ignorance.

Walt

HughB · Sep 3, 2009

First came the drought which was caused by shifting weather patterns. Then poor farming practice caused the soil to blow away when the grasses died.
This is a simplification of a complex set of circumstance. If the top soil had never been plowed up there would have still been a drought. The introduction of more powerful tractors able to pull
gangplows and turn over thousands of acres laid the soil bare. Then the wind which seems to blow for ever caused the huge dust
"rollers". The dust clouds further aggrivated the drought conditions. I was born in 1937 in Pratt Kansas in the middle of a
dust storm. Out of six of us children four had "dust pneumonia".
My father worked for International Harvester developing the tractors that were used to plow up the prairie.

Jahaze · Sep 3, 2009

The show also discussed the jack-rabbit problems, they discussed one drive with 8,000 people rounding up a slaughtering 35,000 rabbits. Pretty amazing sight, hopefully they all ate well that week. They also said a pair of rabbits could produce eight off-spring a month, now I knwo what they mean when they say "breeding like rabbits". I just loved all thd old tractor footage.

Old Roy · Sep 3, 2009

Could you imagine the conept of this too, when a lot of people didn't have food
Untitled URL Link

greenbeanman in Kansas · Sep 3, 2009

Tastes like chicken----mostly bone.

Jahaze · Sep 3, 2009

What I learned last night was that the government bought all those starving cattle, then butchered them and gave the meat back to the farmers (what little there was). It was one of the early stimulus packages

charles lendman · Sep 3, 2009

There was a real good book on the subject of the Dust Bowl...called "The Worst Hard Time"...I forgot the author but its a really informative book..charles

greenbeanman in Kansas · Sep 3, 2009

Speaking of rabbits breeding----while many eat beef I have read that a pair of does and a buck will produce as much meat in a year as one beef does.

I haven't eaten any nice young cottontail rabbit since a kid but I do wonder if I should try it again?

Jahaze · Sep 4, 2009

I love to eat cottontail, just a little shake and bake BBQ sause and your good to go..

Dust Bowl Tractors

Jahaze

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Goose

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greenbeanman in Kansas

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waltdavies

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HughB

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Jahaze

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Old Roy

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greenbeanman in Kansas

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Jahaze

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charles lendman

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greenbeanman in Kansas

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Jahaze

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