Well, Mother Nature is playing an April Fool’s Day trick on us — it’s snowing as I write this. However, it must be spring; I’ve already been to my first tractor show. Last weekend I traveled to Fort Wayne, Ind., and spent about six hours taking in the Maumee Valley Antique Steam & Gas Association [...]
I’ve often heard it said that “what goes around comes around” and “there’s nothing new under the sun.” Here’s an example of that, and, while probably not proving those rules, it certainly illustrates that such things do occur. About two months ago, I wrote about the Reeves Octoauto, a strange-looking eight-wheeled car that existed briefly [...]
How about that Dodge Ram ad at the Super Bowl? It’s not often that the advantages and benefits of farming are placed before such a huge national audience, most of who probably think their food is manufactured by bib overall-clad dwarves in the back room of the supermarket. Did my heart good! The game was [...]
In 1814, George Stephenson built his first locomotive for hauling coal from the mine where he worked.
(Thankfully) my wife and I never had the pleasure of a shivaree as newlyweds
Milton O. Reeves, of the Reeves family who once made steam traction engines and threshers, was associated with the Reeves Pulley Company in Columbus, Ind., at the end of the 19th century. There, he invented a variable speed drive that used two pulleys with sliding split sheaves, just like the ones used for the variable [...]
(Author’s note: This is an “encore” presentation of this column, which was first published in 2002.) Christmas on the western Pennsylvania farm where I grew up was a big time for my sister B.G. and me. We’d pore over the Sears Christmas catalog as soon as it arrived and show Mom everything we wanted. She’d [...]
As promised last time, here are my five final choices for the top 10 most significant new developments in agricultural machinery during the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. I cut it off at 1950 because there have been many, many revolutionary improvements since then in farm machines and practices. In addition to [...]
Ever speculate about what were the most significant new developments in agricultural machinery during the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries? I was asked this some years ago and this is the list I came up with. I don’t believe any of them, with the possible exception of the cotton gin, can be [...]
At the end of October 70 years ago, farmers and farmers’ wives were reading the Farm Journal. It was a dark period in the Second World War; we’d lost more than 40,000 troops and the Philippine Islands, the German army was battering the gates of Stalingrad, England was rebuilding its armed forces after Dunkirk and [...]
