For the past two weeks, my brothers and I have been going through our dad’s barns, shops, garages and machinery retirement zones. Our intent has been to separate the functional machinery from the non-functional, the antiques from the scrap, the keepers from the discards and, in general, to discover whatever is to be found beneath the piles of miscellaneous. Back about 1938, our dad began farming on the home place on Otter Creek north of Pea Ridge. He continued actively farming that place and three other cattle farms until 2004, when he was 90 years old. When you operate farms for those 70 years, your ways of operating change greatly over time, new machinery takes the place of the old, and even the “new” equipment eventually becomes old and worn.

Our dad’s first 10 years of farming was done entirely with horse-drawn farm implements. Through the years some of the horsedrawn equipment that we used has been disposed of, perhaps sold to someone for continued use, or sold as scrap metal. I can note several pieces of equipment that we have not found. For example, in the 1940s Dad bought a new rubber-tired horse-drawn Case mowing machine. Working in the hay was a big thing on our farm, and from about 1944 to 1948, that horse-drawn mower was used to mow the hay fields.

It was quite a striking sight in the field behind the black horses, with its bright yellow wheels set against the red paint of the mower case.

That mower worked so wellthat when Dad later bought a used tractor and a tractor-mounted mower, he was disappointed that the tractor mower gave him so much more trouble. Dad was never a man to use profanity, even when his frustrations were high, but his “Well, I never” and his “forever, forever” were pretty potent words when the mower was giving trouble. With that first tractor mower, we could never get the guards all aligned for smooth sickle operation.

The misaligned guards made removing the sickle blade very hard when it was time to sharpen blades or replace broken sections. I never knew what became of our fine horse-drawn mower. It probably went to someone who was still farming with horses back in the late ’40s.

We also haven’t found the two old McCormick Deering grain binders that we used in the 1940s and early 1950s.

Both were worn out even when we were using them, and I suppose that Dad sold them for scrap years ago. We also haven’t found the old horse-drawn walk-behind moldboard plow. Also, there used to be a large single-bottom riding plow on the farm. It always sat idle against the barnlot fence. I asked Dad about it one time, and hesaid he didn’t use it because it worked the horses too hard, that one really needed three horses to pull it. He always preferred the walkbehind plow pulled by two horses. Both of those old plows have disappeared over the years.

However, we have found a number of old treasures, machines and tools that provoke memories from when we were boys growing up on the farm. For example, in a stack of old machines across the creek from the big barn, we found the old cultivator that Dad used for cultivating corn. Dad’s cultivator was pulled by two horses, and plowed a single corn row.

Although it had wheels to help regulate the depth of the plows, it had no seat for riding. One walked behind it, guiding the cultivator gangs on each side of the corn with wooden handles. That old cultivator was retired before I was old enough to learn to use it, but I remember well when my dad plowed corn with it. There were no herbicides for weed control back then, so we used cultivators to plow out the weeds and loosen the soil to help the corn grow deep roots. Those were the days of general farming, when almost all farmers had a corn crop to feed the chickens and hogs and cattle, and a crop of oats for the horses.

When Dad bought a new Ford tractor from Newt Hailey Ford in Rogers in 1950, one of the implements he made sure to buy was anew mower. Although the 1950 tractor is long gone, we still have that hay mower.

The wooden Pittman rod is broken, but I think if that piece was replaced the old mower would probably mow hay again. I remember one time I thought I had ruined Dad’s prized new mower. I was mowing in tall hay and I hit the hidden stub of a broken sapling. When I looked back, the sickle bar was all stretched out behind me, dragging at an odd angle.

I thought I had destroyed the under-axle attachment on the right. As it turned out, I had only snapped the safety release, and Dad soon showed me how to snap it back in place. Today’s hay mowers work very differently, no rocking Pittmans, noreciprocating sickle blades, basically no sliding parts, everything is rotary.

To be continued ...◊◊◊

Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@centurytel.

net, or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 6 on 06/09/2010