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Farm Equipment That Came Through the Ring of Fire

George Grant

If those who came through the Ring of Fire had any higher priority than defending themselves, it can only have been providing enough food. To that end, they needed and continue to need appropriate farm equipment. This article will elucidate what equipment they likely had upon arrival, based on a recent visit to Mannington.

On the way to the 2021 Capclave/RoFCon, Jack Carroll and I stopped in Mannington for two days. While there we visited the Round Barn Museum and drove perhaps half of the rural roads within the Ring, looking at the land and the farm equipment. We also spoke with some of the long-time residents. The results were quite revealing.

What we saw was there in 2021, not 2000. But much of the equipment we saw was made before 2000, and besides tending to be conservative, farmers generally can’t afford to buy new equipment if the old will continue to serve. Even in those cases where a piece of equipment is newer, it most likely replaced a similar older piece. Farmers know what they can and cannot do with their land, and the land hasn't changed. Equipment that was suitable to work the land in 2000 is still suitable now. Given the slow abandonment of farmland over the years, there was likely more equipment in 2000 than there is now.

The most surprising results came from an unexpected source. Jack wanted to visit the machine shops, so just as he rode along with me to look at the farms, I went into the shops with him. While he was quizzing one employee, I chatted with another. He told me he had grown up putting up loose hay and farming with horses—and he was only in middle age.

Apparently, the age of horse-powered agriculture lasted quite a bit longer there than I would ever have expected. He said some farmers were still working that way into the 1970s. He also said that in the year 2000, the majority of horses in the area were still work horses and used in work competitions. He estimated perhaps twenty teams would compete annually at the fair. We can expect that to resume down-time once the farmers have the time.

His most surprising datum, though, was the number of horse-drawn implements he estimated were still there in 2021—and I did specify within three miles of Mannington. He thought there were at least six hundred to one thousand pieces, thirty to forty percent in usable condition, and the rest restorable. Given there are bound to be pieces hidden away he is unaware of, I lean toward the high side of his estimate. Projecting back to 2000, there were likely over a thousand, and it seems reasonable to assume around half would have still been operable.

Specifics

The horse-drawn equipment we actually saw included a carriage, a cultivator, a sickle-bar mower, a hay tedder (for breaking up clumped green hay so it can dry), a dump rake (for raking cured hay into piles for pickup by hand), and a buckrake. A buckrake is used for gathering hay to build a haystack in the field. Philip Grant, a farmer born in 1926, says he would expect one to be paired with a beaverslide stacker, a machine that built very large haystacks (up to thirty feet high and weighing around twenty tons). Perhaps there used to be one in the Mannington area, but they are mostly wooden and too large to store indoors, so it would have rotted away. If there was one, one or more of the old-timers would likely remember it.

Five horse-drawn implements weren’t very many, but many of their parts are wooden. This many decades after they were manufactured, any that are still sound have been under cover most of the time. We didn’t go searching through farmers’ barns.

Tractors and Implements

We didn’t see as many tractors as I would have expected, but they must be there if people are no longer farming using only muscle power. What we saw were mostly John Deeres. All but one of them were quite small for the modern age, because most of the fields are too small for large equipment.

Looking at maps and aerial photographs doesn’t convey the steepness of the land. Steep forestland is one thing, but you expect farmland to be flatter. The pastures and even hayfields are amazingly steep, right up to vertical and, in one case, overhanging ledge. Thinking pasture can be that steep, but not hay land, isn’t accurate. Farmers need to clip pasture at least once a year or it grows up to species the animals won’t graze. The steepness may be why horses continued to be used for so long and small tractors still dominate mechanical power so thoroughly. A small tractor has a lower center of gravity than a large one and so is less likely to roll over. A team of horses (or oxen) can handle even steeper land than a small tractor.

Of the tractors we saw, only the largest tractor we saw was certainly a diesel. The others could all be gasoline-powered, though small diesels are manufactured. As to age, the large one and one or two others could be post-2000, but the others are all older. Most are only moderately old, but the two at the Round Barn Museum are older still. There is a small steel-wheeled, hand-cranked Fordson from the twenties or early thirties. Philip Grant said the Fordsons used to be called man-killers because of their tendency to roll over backwards. There is also an Allis-Chalmers tractor from the late forties or early fifties. As an interesting aside, the same model was made during World War II but with steel wheels because of the rubber shortage. Most of them had their wheels cut down and rims welded on after the war so they could take rubber tires. The one in Grantville did not have that done, so we conclude it was built after the War.

There were also several skid-steer loaders. As with the implements, there were certainly some tractors that were out of sight when we were there, and we left a lot of road undriven.
We saw quite a few implements, including five sickle-bar mowers, a rotary mower, four side-delivery hay rakes, four square hay balers (one of them very early), one round baler, and two hay tedders. There were wrapped bales, so there must be at least one bale wrapper, even though we didn’t see it. (That innovation is recent enough I would not expect it to have been there in 2000. There wouldn’t be a supply of plastic sheeting for it down-time anyway.) One of each of the following three-point hitch-mounted implements were present: two-bottom plow, rototiller, scraper, broadcast spreader for seeds and other light materials, and the remains of a post-hole digger. Finally, there was a loader-mounted bale spear for picking up round bales.

There were also uncounted numbers of stock trailers and other trailers, which may be pulled by either tractors or pickups. We saw plenty of pickups, but remarkably few trucks larger than a pickup. On the farms, there was just one that looked like a GMC from the mid-sixties. I have spotted others on farms in online aerial photography since then, but the resolution is poor.

And now for the pièce de résistance: a Wood Mizer. Wood Mizer is a brand of portable bandsaw sawmill powered by a mounted engine. When hitched behind a pickup or tractor, it can be moved to where the logs are, and saw them into lumber. It was incomplete, but that doesn’t mean it was in 2000. In fact, its poor condition argues in favor of its having been present that long ago.

Not Seen

I cannot, of course, list them all, but here are a few that may be of interest: forage harvesters (aka corn choppers), corn pickers, combines, reaper-binders, mower conditioners, potato diggers, manure spreaders, harrows, farm bulldozers, cultipackers, Brillion seeders (which break up clods, sow small seed, and smooth and compact the soil in one pass), and heavier spreaders for materials such as lime. This does not mean there weren’t any of those present in 2000. I would bet on the presence of at least one manure spreader and several harrows of one or more types. Probably one or more mower-conditioners, either cultipackers or Brillion seeders, and bulldozers. Definitely not combines or reaper-binders, likely not forage harvesters.

Implements Used Outside the Fields

Due to Covid-19, we were unable, in the two days we had there, to find someone who would let us into either the Round Barn Museum or the West Augusta Historical Society Museum. Nor did we ask to enter people's houses and outbuildings to see what they had.

However, we did see a few things by looking in the windows at the Round Barn Museum. There was a loom, a foot-pumped grindstone, and what looked like two corn shellers. There were several other things neither Jack nor I was able to identify, nor was Philip Grant upon being shown admittedly poor photographs (taken through windows).

We saw two cellar houses, which is to say, root cellars with small storage buildings above them. We also saw two tower silos, though one of them may have been just outside the Ring of Fire. That means the farms were once dairy farms. The Round Barn was also a dairy barn.

That is the limit of our evidence. Given the presence of so much horse-drawn equipment and what it says about the tendency of the locals to keep to the old ways, I would be very surprised if there were not quite a lot of smaller antique farm implements and tools in the area.

Conclusions

What does all this mean for the farms inside the Ring of Fire? The biggest change to our perceptions is that many—if not most—of the up-time farmers were already engaged in animal-powered agriculture. They would have a lot of equipment and know-how to pursue that. The shift to 1631 wouldn’t change their lives all that much. They would be able to get in the harvest, in and after 1631, without taxing the supply of tractor power and its fuels. Also, bringing newly hired down-timers up to speed on the new implements would be far easier than with tractor power.

Copying the horse-drawn implements would be well within the capabilities of down-timer artisans. The implements would therefore be available sooner than if someone had to reinvent them. They would also be available sooner and in greater supply than if the up-timers had to build them with their limited machine shop facilities and trained personnel, which would initially be the case with most tractor-powered implements. They would also be available to more down-timer farmers than if the up-timers also needed to be supplied with them. However, many horse-drawn implements would have to wait for greater iron availability, though less so than the tractor-powered ones. As farming was a priority, some larger quantities of iron should be available to farm implement manufacturers ahead of general availability.

With such limited acreages of flat farmland, the up-timers would not have done extensive annual tillage. What there was would have been primarily home gardens. They were clearly heavily involved in pasturage and haymaking, and had the equipment to do it. That would support beef, dairy (cows or goats), sheep, horses, and several less common pastured species. They appear not to have had much equipment for other types of agriculture, so that will be a heavier lift for those trying to increase food production down-time.

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