 I choose to study
about farming in the 1800s. (19th century) One of the things that farmers needed to use in every day life
were logs. You may think what is so important about logs? Logs where
used for many things,
farmers needed to survive with them. They built houses, fences, barns,
furniture and tools with logs. A useful tool that was used for cutting
logs to hold them still was a Cant Dog. Tools that were involved in
cutting logs were a bucksaw used for cutting through trees and cutting
them up into moveable pieces. Then there also used a tool called the
double bit ax, which was used for splitting logs. The last item I know
about is the single bit ax, which was used for cutting down trees.
(Just like beavers do) What I found interesting about the bucksaw and the crosscut saw was that the bucksaw was used for disciplining children/boys by making the push and pull through a piece of wood for a couple of hours. The crosscut saw was used for kids that had a lot of experience with the bucksaw. The way that farmers used to sharpen tools that had a sharp edge on them was with an almost perfect circular stone. The stone was made out of either a very fine grinned stone or grinned cement. The grinned stone was about thirty inches in diameter and about two to four inches thick. Sharpening tools was usually done in the morning or on a rainy day when not much was able to get accomplished. Some of the tools that were used for sharpening tools were mowing machines, knives, scythes and axes.  I would like to talk
about harvesting now. There were many kinds of harvesting whether it be
from ice harvesting to harvesting crops. I would like to first talk
about ice harvesting. Ice harvesting was a pretty important thing
during the winter harvest in the 1800s. The tools that were used in Ice
harvesting were a short hand ice pick, which looked like a regular ice
pick but it had a short steal piece at the end of it that had a really
sharp point. This tool really surprised me its called the circular saw
it could go twelve inches into the ground but it was powered by a small
little engine. That was what really surprised me. The two last tools
that I know about were involved in ice harvesting was and Ice chisel
and the Ice tongs. The Ice chisel was used after the sawing, was done.
The ice tongs were used to pick up small little shapes that looked like
a small box. (3-D) The first time that ice harvesting was done was
around the year of the 1940s. The amazing part about ice harvesting is
that it is still done today. The areas that involve ice harvesting
would be on rockywold located on Squam Lake. Farmer’s harvested corn in the fall was a horse(s) pull a wagon and the farmer stacked corn on the wagon by cutting the corn down with an item called a corn sickle. There where many of different kinds of sickles it didn’t matter how sharp the corn sickle was it was hard work. I’m sure every fall Joseph T. Brown my dead guy had to do this brutal hard work since he was a farmer. When farmers had collected all their corn they put into a building about five feet off the ground and a piece of tin all the way around it to make sure animals were not to get in and eat the food.  Haying was a popular
thing to do in farming. I’m going to start by talking about the popular
tool, which was for picking up hay, the pitchfork. The item that was
put around oxen was a bow it was to keep the two oxen from separating
from each other. The hay was slowly pulled by ox.(s) The oxen pulled a
little platform that had two axels and four little wheels that where
lopsided. The good thing about oxen was that if they were trained when
they were younger they were able to be the first in the line of the
rest of the ox if the farmer had more than one ox. I’m not quite sure
if Joseph T. Brown had more than one ox. The haying was done around the
date of July 4th or no later than the 4th of July. One of the things
that had to be done to the oxen before they were to go to work was that
they had to be fed and to be brushed them thoroughly. I’m pretty sure
that when Joseph T. Brown was approximately eight to fifteen years old
when he had the job of feeding them ox or oxen and brush them. The person that was in charge of how the ox or oxen where to go and where to move. That person was called a teamster; he guided the ox or oxen around. The teamster had an instrument called a goad stick, which had a short brad at the end of the stick, and he would hit the ox or the oxen on the side of the direction he wanted the ox or oxen to go. Joseph T. Brown was most likely doing everyone of these jobs that I have mentioned. Some jobs that kids had were to mow the lawn with a machine and raking hay with a horse rake or a hand rake. There are probably a lot more jobs that kids had but these are the two I know about. Most farmers had a cellar that contained food such as potatoes, apples, maybe a few pares here and there, at least a barrel of hard cider for father and his friends when there was a get together. In the freezer there might have been some meat hanging in the freezer. From what I know, most farmers had a cellar, and that most likely meant that Joseph T. Brown had a cellar too. By
Ryan L.
Bibliography
Early New England Farming: Tools and Techniques By: Harold Wyatt Illustrated by: Jim Belcher Early farm Life I’m not sure of the author I just got the title of the book. Pictures
Double bit ax -www.cornerhardware.com/ item_213872/Hand-Tools Single bit ax -www.g503.com/ img/tools/pic66.jpg Ice harvesting tools - www.museum.state.il.us/.../ ice_harvesting.html Haying - homepages.wmich.edu/.../ Gida%20haying%20copy.gif |