Farmers First: Hoes, horses & International Harvesters

Hello, farm family!

Yesterday, an old memory resurfaced from some dusty corner of my mind. It was of my great-grandfather sharpening a hoe on our old foot-powered wheel grinder.

Hoes

We used hoes a lot on our farm back then. Naturally, we employed them for transplanting seedlings and weeding vegetable rows, but that was just the beginning.

The stanchion barn that housed our herd of replacement heifers had been built by my great-great-grandfather in the late 1800s. It had wooden floors and gutters.

In the gutters were rectangular holes that opened into the barn cellar, where the manure was stored until it could be spread. To keep the cows from falling into the holes, each hole was fitted with a wooden scuttle.

There were no mechanized barn cleaners back then, so the manure management was done by a person with a hoe. First, you scraped away the manure in the gutter to expose the scuttle. Then, you carefully wedged the corner of the hoe between the scuttle and the gutter floor. If you were good, you balanced the scuttle on its long side and leaned it firmly against the back wall of the gutter. If you weren’t, you dropped the scuttle through the hole and ran down into the pit to dig it out of the manure pile. (I did that more than once!)

With the hole open, you used the hoe to scrape the manure out from under the cows and into the cellar. When you were done, you again used the sharp edge of the hoe to clean the manure out of the ridge that supported the scuttle and (carefully!) lowered the scuttle back into place.

The scuttles were spaced a few feet apart (about the length of a hoe-handle, come to think of it), so you’d move down the barn and repeat the process until the barn was clean. Gramp had a bit of an obsession for manure removal, so he cleaned the barn at least two or three times a day. That quickly took the edge off a hoe.

Hence the memory of the grinder. Before going out to the fields, Gramp would sit at the wheel and sharpen the hoe. He knew that the time he spent at the grindstone would reduce the time and effort he spent in the fields, since a sharp hoe cuts through weeds and soil much more easily than a dull one.

Horses

That got me to thinking about the other tools on a farm and the way we maintain them. Gramp grew up farming with draft horses, and I followed in his footsteps. Mostly I used my horses for farm tours, but periodically I would pull out the plow and try to create straight, even furrows.

Working with horses takes some preparation, though. You can’t just pull them out of the stall or field, throw a harness on them and get to work. Instead, you have to start by giving them a good grooming and picking their hooves. Otherwise, they can get sores where the harness rubs on dirt and manure hiding under their coats or go lame from a stone stuck in the bars along their frogs. (Didn’t know horses had frogs, did you?)

Anyone who has ever farmed with horses will tell you that the 15 or 20 minutes spent before harnessing can save days of lost production due to lameness or sores.

International Harvesters

Although I loved working horses, the rest of my family preferred tractors. Growing up, our tractors came in two colors: Allis-Chalmers orange and International Harvester red.

My dad has been our farm’s primary mechanic for as long as I can remember. He spent untold hours changing oil and air filters, checking fluid levels and greasing fittings.

I can remember sitting on our Farmall 1066 and being bored out of my mind while he performed routine maintenance. It took so long… Was it really necessary? When were we going to actually do something?

I now know that, yes, all that time was certainly necessary. By spending a little time topping off fluids and inflating tires, he was saving himself the much greater cost of a seized engine or a ruined rim.

Humans

Unfortunately, other, more important farm “implements” don’t always get the same attention.

You, your family members and your staff are the most important part of your farm, yet you often take last place once the season gets going.

Think I’m exaggerating? When was the last time you skipped a meal, squeezed in another hour of work or bailed on a family event because there was a farm chore that just couldn’t wait? We’ve all done it.

I’ll be the first to admit that there are times that farming won’t wait. The sun comes out on a day that was forecast to be overcast and the greenhouse plants start to wilt. The rain threatens on a day that was supposed to be clear and the hay is dry in the field. The first-calf heifer starts to freshen and needs a hand right before you leave for a birthday party.

These things happen, and farmers accept that meeting those challenges sometimes means that we sacrifice something of ourselves.

But this should be the exception, not the rule. Just like our hoes, horses and International Harvesters, humans need regular maintenance in order to keep functioning at optimal efficiency.

If we don’t take the time to care for ourselves before there’s an emergency, we lose out in energy, focus and productivity. Jobs take longer than they should, mistakes get made that shouldn’t have and relationships fray under the tension.

Not sure how to start your personal maintenance routine? Send me an email at https://kcastrataro@pen-light.org, and we’ll create a plan just for you and your farm life.

It’s your time to grow!

by K. Castrataro