Harvest from Sickle to Satellite  
DVD, PAL format
 
Brian Bell  
Released 1998
 
   
43 minutes
 
DVD £14.95 inc VAT
  
 
ISBN 0-905523-50-5
 

The 'Sickle to Satellite' working event organised in 1998 by Suffolk farmer Oliver Cooper offered a unique opportunity to see a hundred years of cereal harvesting equipment in operation.
Recorded at the event, this video ranges from the sickle and a scything gang, through trailed reapers and binders to a representative sample of combine harvesters. Interviews with some of the machines' owners are included and the informative script is by Brian Bell.
Among the machines shown operating are a 1930 McCormick Daisy sail reaper, a Lanz self-binder and a Case Model Q reaper-thresher.
Combines at work are Massey-Harris 21 and 780, a Claas Super Junior and a Ransomes 902. Finally, a satellite-linked Massey-Ferguson 40 shows just how far technology has advanced from the days of the scything gang.
Scripted by Britain's most experienced farm machinery writer, Brian Bell, and directed by Jonathan Theobald at Country Films.

 
Harvest from Sickle to Satellite - Brian Bell
 
86-year-old John Waspe   86-year-old John Waspe showing how to make straw bands for tying sheaves of wheat or oats cut by sickle.
Ron Knight’s McCormick Daisy sail reaper, the forerunner of the binder, was first used at the turn of the century.
 
Ron Knight’s McCormick Daisy sail reaper
Massey Harris 21   The first successful self-propelled combine was the Massey Harris 21. Robert Self’s model is a 1944 vintage, powered by a 6-cylinder Chrysler engine.