I was wondering how old this meat grinder (above) is. I am 70 years old and it has been in the family as long as I can remember. I remember it being used before I was big enough to crank it.
When I was a kid we raised our own hogs and beef and ground our own sausage. We used this International Harvester corn sheller (below) for eight or nine years, morning and night, to shell corn for sheep.
My older brother, James, and I used it enough to wear it out but we couldn’t. We used to run it with a washing machine engine until we both got big enough to crank it ourselves, then the engine was done away with. It was also our job to pull the wool off of dead sheep to sell. We finally had to sell our sheep because of dogs killing them.
We also had a mowing machine like this one (below). This one is located in the Roundhill community in Butler, Kentucky. I can remember my dad cutting hay with our mower with a team of mules. He would make about two rounds and stop to let the mules rest. We were raised on a 200-acre farm in central Kentucky. We raised sheep and registered Hereford cattle, so we put a lot of hay in the barn. That was in the 1940s, ’50s and ‘60s.
This buhr mill (below) was manufactured by Williams Mfg. Co. It is well over 100 years old. It was bought new by my great-uncle, Roscoe Huff, who sold it to my dad, A.V. Haynes. It was shipped new to Caneyville, Kentucky, by rail. My great-uncle picked it up there with his team and wagon. Roscoe ran a grocery store where the mill was used every Saturday to grind cornmeal. My youngest brother, Stephen Haynes, bought it at our estate auction. He has stored it in his warehouse in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
John Haynes, 325 Jones Rd., Brownsville, KY 42210
Editor’s note: The word “buhr” refers to buhr stone, a form of tough, fine-grained sandstone once commonly used in production of millstones.