MAKING HAY: A NEW METHOD.

Patea Mail, 7 December 1880, Page 4

MAKING HAY: A NEW METHOD.

The apparatus for making hay recently invented by Mr Gibbs, of Essex, seems to be quite a success, and in a fickle climate like England its general nse would no doubt prevent thousands of tons of hay from being spoiled. The machine is really a haymaker; for it thoroughly dries and makes hay of grass that may have lain in a field for days, and got wet with rain. It dries hay as fast as two men pitching can send the carts, or at the rate o( four one-horse cart-loads per hour. The machine, tried on Lord Ashburton’s farm in Hampshire, in the second week in July, dealt with seventeen waggon loads in seven hours and a half, cleaving twenty-two acres. But a remarkable instance of the success of this hay-drier took place on the farm of Mr Fuller, in Wiltshire. The gentleman had 117 acres mown for hay, and he was able by means of Gibbs’ apparatus to clear that extentof land in three weeks, although during the time there was a fortnight’s continuous • wet weather. Mr Fuller declares that the machine not only makes hay, but accomplishes work well, the expense, so far as he could estimate, being less than the ordinary method of drying by the weather. The machine invented by Gibbs, and manufactured by the Bristol Waggon Works Company, consists of two parts—a frame upon wheels, supporting a sheet-iron reciprocating trough, along which the hay is slowly passed, subjected to a powerful current of boated air, and tightened up by rows of revolving forks or pickers ; and another piece of apparatus on wheels, consisting of a combined furnace and fan supplying the hot air. The fan is driven by a portable steam engine belonging to the farm. The first machine, about 30 feet in length, is not much more formidable in appearance than a hay elevator ; but being in places about 12 feet in total breadth, it requires that some portion of its mechanism be removed when intended to be taken through farm gateways, and it is by the avoidance of such removal and replacement of parts that time may be saved in changing from one scene of operations to another. In the use of this hay-saver the economy is not so much in the cheapness of the process as in making hay secure from damage by the weather, thus getting a more valuable article than that often obtained by the usual and protracted process.