That brings back memories of growing up on a south Georgia peanut farm in the late 1940's and 1950's. In those days peanut vines, with the nuts still attached, were plowed up, stacked on poles to dry, and then two or three weeks later hauled to a stationary peanut picker (combine) in the middle of the field, typically driven by a flat belt from a tractor. The picker separated the nuts from the vines, and cut the vines into sticks six inches or so long. The cut vines were dumped out the rear of the picker in a big pile.
Then one of these square bailers would be pulled up to the pile. Workers with pitchforks would toss the peanut vines into the open top of the bailer where a two foot square ram would compress the vines into a rectangular bale of peanut hay.
Your find has an "automatic" feeder that pushed the loose vines down into the bailer and then pulled back out before the ram pushed those vines into the bail chute. Ours had no such convenience. Foolhardy souls (like me) would push the vines down by hand quickly between strokes of the ram. Stories abounded of one armed men who failed to withdraw their hand before the ram passed by, but I never met one.
