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The end of summer in upstate New York brings crisp mornings, balmy
afternoons, and (when it's not raining) sunshine above green fields and rolling
hills. The end of August also marks the start of the annual Washington County
Fair in nearby Greenwich, New York,
just a 35-mile drive from CR4's home in Troy.
A self-described "agricultural tradition for over a
century", the Washington County Fair features everything from fortune tellers
to tractor pulls. There are prize-winning animals, of course, as well as
prize-winning pies. Then there's the fair's Farm Museum,
which is not too far from the maple cotton candy and the apple barn.
Some fairgoers prefer a ride on the merry-go-round, but this
blogger enjoyed a trip down memory lane. My Farm Museum
"ride" began before any of our lifetimes (unless, of course, you were alive in
the 1880s) and lasted into the twentieth century. As evidence of this late
summer's journey, here are the first of several photographs of antique agricultural equipment.
Ensilage Cutters
Ensilage is the process of processing a crop and putting it
into a silo for storage. By the 1880s, ensilage had become a popular method for
producing and storing feed from corn. In summer, farmers fed corn stalks into an
ensilage machine's metal cutters. A blower, equipped with a series of pipes,
then moved the chopped corn into the silo. The farmer, by moving a hand crank,
provided the power for the blower.
In the twentieth century, the advent of the field harvester
marked the beginning of the end for the ensilage cutter. Armed with these new
machines, farmers could cut standing corn and then blow the feed into a towed
wagon. This wagon stayed in the field until full, and was then moved to the
silo. There, an automatic unloading system moved the corn into storage.
Fanning Mills
Fanning mills were found on farms after American wheat
production began to increase in the 1830s. This type of agricultural equipment
resembled a large wooden box. At one end, four to fix wooden paddles were
attached to an axle. Turned by a hand crank, the paddles caused air to blow
across a series of screens. A wheel on one end of the fan shaft drove an arm
that shook two or three screens back and forth.
With fanning mills, raw grain was poured into a hopper and then
shaken down through the screens. The blast of air from the manually-powered fan
removed separated the wheat from the chaff and removed dirt. When the clean grain
reached a screen it couldn't pass, it was shaken out a spout into a container.
Editor's Note: Click here for Part 2 of this two-part series.
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