Founded in 1847 in Newcastle, Ontario by Daniel Massey, Massey Harris was to become the foremost Canadian farm implement manufacturer for many years. The company made some of the world's first mechanical threshers. Alanson Harris, a farmer and mill owner, founded his implement business in 1857 at Beamsville, Ontario. Using some good American designs, such as the Kirby mower and reaper, business flourished, and the company became strong competitors of the Massey company, moving to Brantford, Ontario in 1872. In 1891, Massey merged with the Harris Company to become Massey-Harris Company, becoming the largest agricultural equipment maker in the British Empire. In 1953, Massey bought out Ferguson, thereby becoming Massey Ferguson. In 1995, Massey Ferguson worldwide holdings was purchased by the U.S. based AGCO Corporation.
It was Massey Harris that, in 1941, introduced the first self-propelled combine to be mass-produced - ever, anywhere. Well before that time they were producing grain binders such as this one in great numbers, in fact as early as the 1870s. Binders initially used wire to tie bundles; this unit uses twine. Though ground driven binders such as this example were horse drawn until the advent of the gasoline powered tractor, we believe this unit was manufactured later, in the tractor era, but well before the development of the PTO (power take-off). It was the International Harvester Company (IHC) who was first to market with a PTO on a production tractor, with its model 8-16, introduced in 1918. In short order the PTO became available on essentially all makes of farm tractors. The benefit was obvious, as now power could be supplied to an implement from the tractor, rather than from the motion of the implement over the ground.
We can't really say when this unit was manufactured, but the general style was in use by the turn of the 20th century and models identified as being made in 1910 appear essentially identical.
The Massey Harris Reaper-Binder
Essentially, this ... machine consisted of a bull-wheel in contact with the ground with gearing to distribute the power to the various moving parts of the machine. A cutter driven by a pitman from a crank, fingers to hold the crop while it is cut, a large rotating reel to sweep the cut crop onto a platform (perhaps one of the most prominent features of the machine), an elevator or endless belt of canvas to carry the cut crop to the packing platform, and a binder to tie the packed bundles of crop.
In practice, the machine is advanced into the crop. The reel pushes the standing crop towards the cutter bar and backing platform, so that as the crop is cut, it lies in the same direction with ears of grain to the back of the platform and stalk near the cutter bar. The platform is covered by the elevator, which picks up the crop and moves it sideways, elevating it over the bull wheel, and depositing it on the top of a sloping deck. The crop then slides down this deck and is compressed by packer arms until the amount of compressed crop trips the binding mechanism. The bound sheaves are then swept to the ground where they were manually stacked into stooks for further drying, then threshing or storage in the haystack.
From the MASSEY-HARRIS REAPER/BINDER
Kettle River Museum
The first railway to arrive in the area was the Columbia & Western, a subsidiary of the CPR. It was an extension of the CPR's line at Castlegar, intended to eventually link to the main line which ran to the coast. This link, known as the Kettle Valley Railway, was finished, finally, in 1915, linking the interior with the coast. The KVR ran from this point 600 km. west to meet the main line at Hope, BC. Built through rugged, mountainous terrain, it was hailed as an engineering landmark when completed.
The line remained in operation until, due to a changing economic climate, the KVR was abandoned and the tracks removed, beginning in 1991. Fortunately for us history buffs, a few far sighted individuals have managed to rescue this station for posterity.
As well as the station, the museum includes a main building housing smaller historical artifacts and interpretive displays of rail, mining, forestry, and agriculture heritage, an artifacts yard with larger artifacts, a caboose, a section house, a 6 bedroom bunkhouse (newly renovated and available to rent for hikers, cyclists and others) and a machine shed, which houses a plethora of mining, railroading and agricultural machinery. In this building is an old Austin Fire Truck, as well. The museum also has a picnic area shaded by a century old maple tree, grown from a seed planted by the wife of the station master.
The Kettle River Museum opened July 12, 1977 in a smaller building within the Village of Midway. That building housed many, or most, of the artifacts and displays to be found in the present main museum building. Some time after 1985 the museum was relocated to this spot to take advantage of the presence of the turn of the century heritage railway station.