[mitchmaine]

Matthew, when we were in grade school, this old man used to come around every once in a while and give us a talk on the ice industry. I never paid close attention and maybe he didn’t know what he was talking about, but if he did and I remember right, what you have is a scoring plow. Gifford and wood made lots of ice tools. It might say that somewhere on it. Its job was to score the ice a couple inches deep one way and reset to make it wider the other way making a rectangular cake that wouldn’t jamb in the chutes. Then they had a single row plow that took the cut to about 6 -8’ deep. They tried to get about 2/3 through the ice and then saw it from there. They would wait for the ice to get a foot thick, but there didn’t seem to be a standard size. It weighed about 60 pounds per cubic foot and the cakes were huge. They would sweep the chips back into the grooves they made to keep the water from flowing back in and refreezing the ice field. Horses and men were always falling in the water. There was a choker of some sort on the horses and when drawn tight kept their lungs inflated if the fell in. we are near the Kennebec river and the ice houses have been gone for a long time, but tools like yours show up all the time. I agree with donn. Before I put your plow in a museum I’d find someone who could use it, but before I did that I’d keep it. its a real corker. You might need it someday.

We have a unique type of horse shoe around here. I still have some. They aren’t specific to the ice trade, but were popular in it. They were cast with four tapered holes in the face that took the toe and heel caulks. There was a special tool that set and pulled the caulks in or out. You could set your shoes once and keep replacing the caulks or pulling them out anytime you chose.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

pull some beans and clean up the gardens. plow and drill some spelt and rye. maybe another few cuts of second cut. and then firewood.
a couple years ago, we started yarding our wood out to the woodline and maybe into the dooryard. we used to cut and pile down in the woodlot, but having it here gets it into the cellar much faster. we already have two tiers in and piled. i love cut and fit stovewood, piled nice and neat. warms me just looking at it.

[mitchmaine]

what’s that saying about doing the same thing over and over expecting different results?

[mitchmaine]

donn, every field every day is a little bit different. couldn’t have said it better. my hayfield can’t be too much different from yours, in that it probably has two or three different soiul types not including the swales, waterbars and scantic soil. and hundreds of different forages and grasses. all ripening at different stages any particular day. and drying at different rates up and down the feild as you go onto high ground or into the swales. couple that with stretching the time over two or three weeks and it becomes a real head scratcher.
the science is your tool (knowledge) just like your rake and tedder. how you use them is the art of haymaking. like letting dry hay in your bale cure the small bits of green that end up in there cause you just can’t seem to cure the whole field at the same rate at any one time. we just have to do the best we can. carry on.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

case or new idea made a three bar iron wheeled rake that doubled as a tedder. you had to change the hub to get it revolving backwards like a grimm or a nicholson reel tedder. is that what you are describing, tim? all the late roll bar rakes i can think of and pinwheels have fixed plumb teeth without an adjustment. but i can’t remember a rake that rakes to the right either so shows you what i know about rakes. george, what kind of rake do you have, please. seems if you have to rake to the right, you have to go against the direction of the baler. seems odd to me, thats all.

[mitchmaine]

Feeding and mucking out a horse for twenty years, especially a steady horse, that gives her all whenever you ask and askes nothing in return becomes part of the barn and you expect to see her everytime you go in, just like seeing a finger on your hand every time you look down. They become part of you and your day, and when they are gone, and you look down and your finger is missing, part of you and your day is missing too. Horses come and horses go but some are special and don’t go so easy. Sorry about your horse

[mitchmaine]

hey donn, just for the record, i had about the same yeild you did on 2nd cut. because the grass was so low, it had a tendancy to fall ahead of the horse mower leaving a couple inches of stubble uncut, and i thought it should be a cleaner cut. so i tried it with our mower conditioner and the horse mower did a better job. in the experiment, the feild was consistant, and i was a fair control seeing that i set up both mowers and was motivated to do the best job in each case. our neighbor, of course, mows with a discbine and his feilds look like golf courses. but i’m doing the best that i can.

[mitchmaine]

Its three o’clock in the afternoon, and supposed to rain tomorrow. Todays hay is still a tad green to bale. You could bale it up anyway and let it sit on the wagon a couple days in on the barn floor to cure before you throw it up overhead. You could always feed it out to the dry cows and heifers. Or you could see, it might not really rain tomorrow, and you could bale it then. If it rained on it , you could sell it for mulch and get a couple bucks for it. You do the best you can, I guess.
Jump forward seven months, everything dead for a thousand miles in all directions and covered with snow. You grab the same bale of hay and toss it down off the scaffolding behind the neighbors waiting truck. He’s short of hay and needs a few bales. Nothing on earth looks as green to me as hay in march. “beats eatin’ snowballs.” My dad would say. You do the best you can.

[mitchmaine]

that is exactly the reason i like this rotary rake so well. it sweeps it once to the side and thats it. a side delivery rake tumbles it over and over into a rope and out making it much tougher to dry and a spin tedder eats grass alive.

[mitchmaine]

hey george, my hay may not have been as thick as yours. we had to triple them up. my thought was to rake first, then ted because it was so thinnly spread around. in the end we never tedded it. just reraked it three times and baled it. we have a rotary rake and it sweeps the grass till its standing. dries very nicely that way and keeps its color. if you had a neighbor with that rake and had him do a field for you, you could experiment a little, maybe. best o’ luck, mitch

[mitchmaine]

great looking job. could you take a couple pictures without the guards for us?

mitch
p.s. had to rake and bale a wagon load of straw today, trying to beat the hurricane. fifth day of ninety degree weather. ouch.

[mitchmaine]

carl, sorry about the loss of your friend. from the picture, it looks like he has a kind face and an easy going manner. best wishes to his wife and family.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey erika, sounds like a dream vacation.
when we were in school, our local fair was held in october, and we used to get two days off from school to go. seemed like everybody had something to do with it or at it. and up in aroostook, they had three weeks off from school each fall to pick potatoes. lots of hand work then.
if you had stock at the fair, somebody had to spend the night with them. that was before campers and it meant you slept in the hay with a blanket and the cows. night life at a fairgrounds is very interesting. carnies, kids and a watchman or two. i’d like to do that again, but you can only be twelve once, i guess.

[mitchmaine]

hi erika, if you had a chance ever, you should try to get over here to fryeburg fair some october. i know its a journey, but i think you might like it. barns after barn of milking cattle with a walk through milking parlor, and barn after barn of beef and working cattle. i’m bad at numbers but i remember that they said once they wanted 500 head on the grounds during the fair. and their rule is if you come and show you are there for the week.
then they have their parade of working cattle all yoked and brushed, shampooed and shined up, looking like a million dollars making a loop around the fairgrounds. its quite a sight to see and you could talk cattle for ever with those folk. just a thought. mitch

[mitchmaine]

Hey oldkat, up here in maine, we have county fairs, all licenced by the state, except for cornish fair, I think. There are about two dozen fairs and only 16 countys so go figure. They run one at a time from late june through til early October. They are agricultural fairs with exhibition halls full of quilts, vegetables, pies, on so on. Lots of cattle, horses, sheep etc. To be judged, and pulling rings for steers oxen and horses. 4-h handles the baby beef judging, and the calf and pig scrambles. Also, to keep the people coming, we now have tractor pulls, mud runs and demolition derbys.
Then there is the common ground country fair, different in that there is no carnival, and tends more to rural life than some of the others fairs might.
Some are big wealthy fairs and some are smaller, but pool and redistribute some of their money to keep them all going.
Once, before travel was so easy, they all happened roughly at the same time and you went to your local fair and that was about it. Times have changed and its nothing to go to several and competitors like horse pullers go to all. They all claim to be 150 – 175 years in existence, so they must be doing something right.
Farming can be a lonely life and it’s a good feeling to get off the farm, take a break from the chores and swap yarns with friends you haven’t seen in a while. Life is good. Your turn. Let us know what fair life is like in your neck of the woods.

mitch

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