The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

Last Saturday event of our local old-timer club was harvesting Sugar beet the way it was done about forty to fifty years ago. It was organized by the youngest members.
Four machines were working all day to get them out and a lot of other tractor with different sort of lorry drove the beets to the farm.
A local lady makes videos and was present at this unique event.
I would like to share it with you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmgwHU7I7sE

Great flick, Henk!

Thank you very much for sharing. Seems you had a great day!

Great video Henk, many thanks for it.

We had a beet harvester here called the John Salmon Forecaster which had the beet tank mounted over the tractor only that one was steel. All you heard all day long was the thump of beet landing just above you head. what with that and the bellow of a 4000 under load there is no wonder there are a lot of deaf tractor drivers.

A Stoll with electric controls was my teaching aid when i taught at the local agricultural college.

One Dutch harvester we had over here we designed a modified electronic control system for, the forerunner of what I build now for carrot, onion and parsnip harvesters. It was a six row machine that lifted the beet then put them back on the ground in a windrow as the engine and cab passed over them before picking them up again and loading them into trailers with the back half. It was called a Kuiken.

It is also good to see beet that still have the tap root on when they leave the harvester rather than the round ones that come from modern day machines.

Can I poke my nose in here We're hundreds of miles from the nearest sugar beet here, but neighbours do grow carrots and swedes with not-too-dissimilar machinery, although everything is grown in de-stoned beds..

I guess you knew when the Forecaster hopper was full when beet started falling from the sky

When I was about seven or eight years old, I saw this hopper for the first time. When the beet harvest was on, there use to be a long row of tractors and horses with lorries at the harbour at my village. Every day I went there to see this ongoing show of tractors. One day I saw this tractor with this strange outfit. Whit a school friend I climb on the empty lorry and off we went to somewhere I had never been. Now I know it's about 5 km. The farmer went away for his lunch and we sat on the tractor. After a long time he returned and harvest began. It scared the hell out of me when the sugar beet fell on the hopper. Dirt was falling on our heads. When two lorries were full, the harvester was disconnected and the lorries were hooked up to the tractor and we went back to the harbour. I had missed lunch and was very hungry. Mother was not amused, but not alarmed when I did not showed up for lunch. She was used to the fact that I was late for anything because I forgot time when I saw interesting things.
Some things you never forget.
Later I lived at a nearby village and the local contractor had four or five Stoll V50 working. Late in the evening I heard them rattling when they passed my home.

The John Salmon tank was a tipper to empty and there was a massive frame around the tractor. One of our customers prepared his tractor for harvest, put the frame work and tank onto it then called me out to fit a clutch. He was not best pleased when I told him that it had all got to come off again for me to split the tractor.

I learnt some new words that day as he blamed me for wanting to split the tractor to fit a clutch. He was one of our regular customers and had around ten Ford and Fordson tractors and did not realise they all had to be pulled apart to get a clutch in.

Most of our beet machines here used to be Standen with a few Catchpole Cadets and Ransomes and of course, my old favorite, the Webb 360 degree loader came out for loading.

Hi Brian,

Do you happen to talk/write about this Kuiken beet harvester?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE3WkSMOGwY (from about 4 minutes)
http://www.fassaertmachines.nl/oogsten/ ... _FaSSiLSM8


or this one?
http://www.borga-appingedam.nl/?page_id=203
https://www.tractorfan.nl/picture/766735/
https://www.agrifoto.nl/nieuws/log/4541

Pascal, it was the one in the video but it had a lifter loader on the rear so the beet were put onto the land then picked up and put on the trailer straight away. It appeared here at the National Sugar Beet Demonstration near Bury St Edmunds in the mid 1980's. The farmer bought it from the demonstration, it had electronic depth control on either side of the lifter mechanism but this failed and we were asked to sort it out. We designed and fitted our Positrol system for it and that is still going today with improvements. It was also used on the Garford three/four row harvesters.

Hi, thought I would awaken this slumbering thread as I found this video, I know it's not sugar beet but there's some very big hoppers mounted on top of tractors, not unlike the beet harvesters earlier in the thread - and anyway, the tractors are mostly blue https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBoXjM ... 395KJQkSRw

Thanks, Bob. Absolutely fascinating.

Pavel.