SEGMENT: FARMING METHODS, FARM EQUIPMENT, & FOOD & MEALS
John Moore>UIS Collection K-M>UIS Collection K-M, Segment 17
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- FOOD & MEALS
- Grew sweet potatoes and potatoes; kept them overwinter in basement. No cave. Kept milk cool in basement and in well.
- FARM EQUIPMENT
- Used a sulky plow, one-bottom horse-drawn walking plow. Worked up ground with harrow they rode or walked after plowing. Corn planters with wire and trip-fork used when he was a boy. Rolled soil, harrowed it, then cultivated.
- CROPS
- Grew oats and wheat, but no soybeans till the 1930s.
- FARMING METHODS
- Used his binder on neighbors farms. Four horses pulled a self-binder six-to-eight feet swaths. Describes how the binder works & makes oat or wheat shocks. Shocks stayed in fields till ready to thresh. Steam thresher worked by group of neighbors with rack wagons. Hauled wheat to elevator or oats to granary and threshed. Women cooked. Saw beautiful shocks on way to St. Louis, and Amish people still thresh. Last of July. Straw was stacked till used. It fed cattle, stuffed bedding. Corn fed animals. He preferred horses to mules. Hired man from Missouri liked big mules and medium horses.
