John Deere Sickle Mower - Eureka, MT
Posted by: 
T0SHEA
N 48° 54.333 W 115° 04.969
11U E 640489 N 5418727
This is sickle mower number eight in this collection and it is the most rare and unusual.
Waymark Code: WMV8VC
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 03/15/2017
Views: 1
Someone had managed to gather together about 60 farm implements and wagons and has decided to put them on display. The vast majority of the farm implements are very old horse drawn machines. The collection includes plows, cultivators, harrows, discs, mowers, corn planters, farm wagons, potato diggers and planters, a hay loader, a manure spreader and three road graders. The display is immediately north of Highway 37 and 1.2 miles west of Highway 93 which runs through Eureka and north to the Canadian border. The site appears to be accessible 24/7/365, at no charge.
It is rare and unusual in that this is the only mower here with a buncher attachment. We don't know how many manufacturers offered this add on. Possibly this was a third party accessory. The buncher attaches to the side of the mower and drags along the ground behind the sickle bar, accumulating hay as it goes. When the buncher is sufficiently full the farmer must manually lift it to empty it, then let it fall back to the ground to start the cycle anew. Theoretically, this could eliminate the need to rake the hay into either stacks or windrows before manually loading it onto hay wagons.
We have no idea how useful or effective these bunchers were as we've never seen one in action. If they only managed to catch a portion of the hay, letting much of it slide under, that could explain their rarity.
This buncher is attached to a John Deere No. 2 mower. This is an open gear mower with the John Deere name, not Dain. The open gear models, it seems, were discontinued in 1915, making this mower's date of manufacture between 1911 and 1915. The enclosed gear models were only made from 1915 to 1921 and proved unpopular.
