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- Pumped About Pumps
Restoring a windmill isn't that hard, especially after you've done one. However, like all projects, there are some tricks of the trade that make it a whole lot easier and safer. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a unique piece of the past.
Robert said the other day that he has a relative who's got the fever and will be getting one. Guess it will be even easier the third time around. I am always interested in talking about windmills.
- Ed Hobbs, 4417 Inwood Road, Raleigh, NC 27603; (919) 828-2754; e-mail: hobbsed@msn.com
Hay bale tale
I rode that horse or sat on the tongue with a sack full of hay for a seat. The singletree ring or something else sometimes broke. The tongue would snap back, and I was walking behind the horse, my shins got a big jolt. Ouch, that hurt!
When Dad fed the baler, he used a small fork to drag the hay from the table where a pitcher had placed the hay. My dad always pushed the feed of hay down with the butt of the fork.
Many days he finished 200 bales by noon. In my teenage years, I worked for a neighbor who owned a little Case baler powered by one-cylinder motor, but it didn't have the power we needed for baling, so he would take the motor off the baler and belt up his Allis-Chalmers B tractor for more power.
One day while baling, the owner of that baler said, "Shut it down" after one hour of work. I had been tying the wire as I always did. There were 93 bales baled in that one hour.
The hay was pushed from the back-side of the field, down a windrow until the back rake got full, then to the baler. This was a homemade rig with long 2-by-4-inch studs sharpened on the end to form teeth. It had a long 2-inch pipe for an axle, and two wheels near the back. Also, a 2-inch pipe was bent in a semicircle and fastened to the axle.
A John Deere tractor was used to push it with the front wheels inside the semicircle. The pipe was raised up and fastened to the center of the tractor to push or back the rig out and guide it as needed. The driver always backed out in the field to get another load as it was easier to guide, and he could go faster.