SICKLE MOWER VS FLAIL

[stuckmotor]

In the fifties and early sixties a guy used to mow beside the state road that went by our place with a mounted cycle bar mower. His tractor was small, probably a Farmall A or Allis Chalmers B. It had a long tray to carry at least one extra knife section. I don't know how many times a year he cut but doing it on a regular basis seemed to keep the sprouting bushes and trees down to what his outfit could handle.

I was the kid playing in the yard and the driver would speak to me when he stopped at our spigot to refill his water jug. The little tractor and cycle bar were eventually replaced by a larger tractor with a rotary mower and I the old guy didn't stop by our spigot any more. He was probably replaced, too.

 

[bigtiller]

yes, they had pretty much switched to crown vetch as the preferred ground cover by then.

OH-NO, I got my weeds mixed up. You're right, it was Crown Vetch and not Multi-Floral Rose.

Now I will go back and edit my mistake.
Sorry for the confusion.

 

[mo1]

Everything in my area they switched to boom mounted flails for whatever reason.

But I remember as a kid they'd run that setup with a flail and a sickle for the ditch. Always worked well.

With that, because they switched to a boom mounted flail for their mowing, they had to get gigantic tractors, instead of normal sized (usually open cab) machines. (As a taxpayer, not happy when I see them highway crews sitting in this huge air conditioned machine.) I live in NY, so that answers that.

The state and county highway departments used to use 40-70 HP open station tractors with sickle mowers. The county now uses a 2WD 7210 Deere with a hydraulic boom rotary mower (the county isn't rich) and the state uses Deere 6130Rs with 20 foot Shulte batwings. Nothing like seeing $200k of your tax dollars rolling by mowing your ditch when they used to use equipment that maybe was $25k in today's dollars 15 years ago.