How Did They Do It: Past Farm Practices

By Leslie C. McManus
Updated on September 13, 2023
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by Jim Lacey
Before the advent of self-oiling systems, oiling the windmill was a necessary but spine-tingling chore. Here, a selection of windmills typical of the offering available a century ago from the Emick collection, Lamar, Colo.

Farm practices of the past routinely leave me shaking my head. Take, for instance, the prospect of picking, say, 50 acres of corn by hand. By yourself, before winter sets in. Start before sunup and scoop the load into the corn crib at noon. Stop for a meal, return to the field and keep at it until dark. Scoop another load, take care of the horses, do chores and collapse into bed. Day after day after day, do it all again.

Consider the tobacco farmer of a century ago. To get the plant bed in the best possible condition for planting, steam engines were used to steam-sterilize tobacco beds. Using a large “pan,” steam was forced into the ground, killing weeds and insects alike.

Pans typically measured 9 by 12 feet. In the early days, they were so heavy that it took six men to pick one up and move it to the next position in the field. Imagine how many passes it would take to cover just one field in such a process – let alone acres of ground.

Compared to today’s world, life a century ago offered few diversions. To a farmer, diversions must have seemed like something that happened only to other people. Those who chose to farm had to produce results – or their family suffered.

How did they do it? That’s a question also posed by Jim Lacey in this issue, writing about the chore of oiling windmills before self-oiling mills existed. As one who has had considerable hands-on experience with antique mills, Jim knows the dirty secret of antique windmill maintenance. Quite simply, there wasn’t much of it.

Elsewhere in this issue, Sam Moore explores the ways in which evolving technology began to spare farmers’ backs, beginning with loose hay loaders and barn trolleys. Sam recalls seeing, as a boy, old-timers permanently bent almost double, the price they paid for punishing their bodies for decades. He also tossed around a word we don’t hear much anymore: lumbago.

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