Readers, can you help?

By Joe Greiwe

Joe Greiwe

Can anyone identify this item? On the front bar, it says Made in Canada Pat Pend. What would it have been used for?

Joe Greiwe, 206 Albers St., Batesville, IN 47006

Editor’s note: Can anyone help Joe with this?

Implement Looks like a Bruner Weed Spacer

In the letters to the editor of the February 2021 issue of Farm Collector was a letter from a reader who believed that a photo in the December 2020 issue showed a potato hiller. I do not believe that was correct, as I own the same piece of equipment and have an old ad that promoted the piece.

photo by: courtesy of David Witte.

The 1935 improved weeder spacer produced by R.G. Bruner Mfg. Co., Ferndale, Mich.

This piece of equipment is a weeder spacer. The item was used to thin plants such as onions, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, and parsnips. It came with three attachments.
The device is not set up to lift the soil and create a hill over produce. The propeller has rectangular openings that soil would pass through and prevent the tool from creating any type of hill. (If you wanted a hilling effect, you would want full blades without openings to get as much soil as possible.)
Nowhere in the advertisement does it state that the equipment can be set up to hill potatoes or other produce. Hope this helps.

David Witte,
West Bend, Wisconsin