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The following photograph is from a photo album that was owned by my maternal grandparents Allen and Gladys (Bittner) Korns of Southampton Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. It shows neighbors Allen Lester Korns (near individual) and Lester Harvey Korns (far individual) posing with a ground-powered grain binding machine. Allen and Lester are sitting on the hood of a tractor that is probably Allen's Fordson. Photo courtesy of Dana (Dietle) Moore.
I can remember helping to shock grain in one of the fields of my paternal grandparents Irvin and Alma (Miller) Dietle of Larimer Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania and I can remember watching a threshing machine in operation at the barn of our Mercer County, Pennsylvania neighbors Victor and Helen Marburger, but I don't remember ever seeing a binding machine being used to tie the sheafs in preparation for shocking. I think I have a vague memory of seeing this strange-looking contraption parked in a sort of junk yard row along a wooded lane on the Korns farm when I was a kid, and asking my cousin what it was. By that time, Allen Korns (my grandfather) was using a tractor-towed combine to harvest grain. One of the other old pieces of equipment in that junk yard row was an old-fashioned hay loader for loading loose hay onto a wagon being towed behind the loader.
L. Dietle
March 30, 2025
