American Harrow From Over a Hundred Years Ago

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When an Amish neighbor had his moving sale a couple years ago, Khoke and his grandfather William, attended and hoped to acquire the old horsepower well digger that they would be selling. It was a rather cold, miserable day and they had several hours of standing as they waited. But the wait was worth it and $3,000 later the well driller was theirs.

There was much pride and quite a bit of showing off – seeing whose horse could operate the quickest, the quietest and with the most grace. Through this came the evolution, refinement – and adornment – of the loose-jaw spade bit, something that came to be considered to be the ultimate example of light-handed control. Is felt during that era, that the loose jaw spade – in gentle, masterful hands – could create a horse instantly responsive, due to the sensitive nature of a horse’s mouth.

Perhaps no other implement a farmer uses is subjected to as hard knocks as is a stalk cutter. It must work on high ridges and low, on frozen ground and in mud. To cut heavy, damp stalks a cutter must have plenty of weight and be so constructed that all that weight can be placed on the knives.

In a world of screens, notifications, and the pressure to multi-task, sheep shearing is a refreshing diversion from the digital world. It requires a great deal of both intention and attention, and there is something romantic about focusing on a task where you have to be both strong and delicate in your movements.

Customers need to be able to see them and read the labels without bending over or having to move them which means they need to be at a comfortable height and angle. Our first displays were wooden constructions using wine boxes with two display shelves installed at an angle. They were adequate and looked good, but once our jar offerings expanded they were short of display space and wasted too much table space since they couldn’t be stacked.

Among my early memories are the countless summer forays into the woods and fence rows with my father in search of berries. In Ohio, it was for wild raspberries usually and wild strawberries if we could find them. I can remember Dad lifting and carrying us kids across large patches of nettles to save our bare legs and arms from their stings as we explored. We came home with our pails of tiny wild berries and a glowing satisfaction in the seek and find trek that left us scratched from one end to the other.

We often brought orphan lambs or weak calves in to warm up and doctor. We also had a cat living in the house for a few weeks, but – the first real housepet we ever had was a Guinea Pig.

I’ve walked past the spot a hundred times, but I never saw it before. All summer, and all winter too, my dog and I romp through the mud, snow, and weeds on our usual rounds along the edge of the field, behind the stand of trees, and around the other side, where the sun shines bright on our faces in the mornings. He sniffs everything, while I wish for more trees on the horizon. I never noticed the small clump of wild mint, not until the other day.

As a kid Laura had often thought she must have skipped a generation, somehow slept through changing times like Rip Van Winkle. Missed some great upheaval like the Revolutionary War, when that portrait of the mad Royal George was touched up to become the fatherly General George. Her mother’s folks had been farmers, who stuck with it even when a freeway cut their place in half and gobbled nearly a quarter of their 456 acres to accommodate that confused yet bustling river of speed, noise and exhaust.

During a visit to my parents in eastern Washington, I learned of the Palouse Empire Threshing Bee Association’s annual Plowing Bee. It took place April 18-19 at the Palouse Empire Fairgrounds outside Colfax, WA, which is on my route home to Oregon. I stopped by on the Sunday and got some photos of the teams finishing up the plowing, harrowing and planting of a very large field west of the Fairgrounds.

Are you familiar with the parable of the farmer’s problem? I doubt it, you see, as it’s a new one I just wrote. A few weeks ago, dad asked me to help him with a repair on the dozer. “What is the problem we’re looking at?” I asked, peering at a muddle of wires and grease and dirt. Dad pointed. “That right there is the problem…”

Moving steadily down the field, the two mule, one mare team pulled the one bottom riding plow easily. Early spring plowing of corn stubble is an easy job – unless the staulks catch on the plow and cause a plug up. In the middle, the mare, perhaps 16.2 hands tall, Liver for her color, almost exactly like fresh cut liver. To her left, in the furrow is Jack, a red mule about 16 hands.

Above the sixtieth parallel, we occupy a northern experiment. The corner of Canada known as the Yukon is remote and relative to the rest of north America, became populated by settlers by and large only in the last 80 years. Farming here is on a small scale. The largest producers might be considered in the hobby farm realm down south. The largest cattle operation has 30 head of cow/calf pairs and similarly, the largest hog producers have 40-50 head.

“It’s sorghum time in Tennessee,” I thought as we drove up Rose mountain. Just as the leaves start to change colors you know somebody will be pressing some sorghum cane. Getting out of the truck I hear the steady clip, clop of the horses hooves going round and round the old sorghum mill. As I take a look around and I see the steam coming off the cooker, children playing on the squeezed sorghum cane piles, and a genuine smile on everyone’s faces. Walking up to the cooker, I can tell they’ve just started cooking, “Hold this here skimmer” JJ tells me and I take it. Skimming has never actually been my favorite job but on this beautiful October morning I find the joy in skimming.

The ranch I have and the things I’ve done were due to horses. I had work horses for hire by contractors for freighting, haying or construction jobs; I owned riding and pack horses for running dude outfits in the mountains; I raised riding horses to sell; I supplied bucking horses for rodeos; I broke horses for hire or just for fun; I caught wild horses and drove them in bands to the railroad; I bought and sold horses, hoping to make a profit; I kept horses for people short of pasture. A couple of times I rented horses and horse gear to movies. I am a horse-made man.

When Ramon’s pig arrived from heaven, some years ago, the richest man in Texocan owned a hectare of land, a little over two acres; the poorest had only a fraction of an acre. All the people were poor and the poorest man of them all was Ramon Garcia. Most of Ramon’s neighbors owned a goat or a pig, and a few had donkeys, but Ramon had neither goat nor pig, much less a donkey.

Timothy is well adapted to the cool, humid climate of the Northeastern and North Central States and also to the mountain valleys of the rocky Mountains and the coastal region of the pacific Northwest. It grows better on clay loams than on the lighter-textured sandy soils. Throughout the area to which it is adapted, it is more extensively grown for hay, either alone or in a mixture with clover or alfalfa, than all other grasses combined.

Meeting the day knowing what needs to be done, the choices of how to do it, the view of consequences, a vision of best outcomes; farmer’s don’t much think about such things, too busy pulling their boots on and getting to the job at hand. The assessments inside the working moment are illusive, especially if the work holds risk, or urgency, or a consuming nastiness and dread. But when there are seconds which bring relief, or joy, or wonder, there is a sliver of a window when farmers, we farmers, can observe, ‘Oh yeah, there it is, that’s it – .’ Inside that realization, that’s where we belong and it’s a long ways from downtown.

“Winter wheat,” a grain crop that is planted in the fall and harvested in the early summer, is quite common; but way back in the beginning of the nation most farmers planted “spring wheat” and harvested it in late summer. As agriculture moved west, some region climates were found to be harsh and better suited to winter wheat.

William renewed his search for the thresher he wanted. He found one advertised in South Carolina but before going through all the effort of finding out how to transport it the 1000+ miles here, he wanted a look at one like it. He contacted the Old Threshers Museum in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and talked to Paul Bishop there. Paul told him that yes, they had one and as a matter of fact, it was currently for sale.