This past weekend I took my grandson, Carter, to a small thrashing show and draft horse plowing. Carter is 4 1/2 years old. We loaded up in the car and did the short ride to the show, Grandpa and Carter time.
When we pulled into the field and parked the car a team of horses was making their first pass with a one bottom plow. We got out the car and walked over to the edge of the field being plowed. The soil turned easily and smooth. I started showing Carter small details of the plowing. I pointed out the one horse walked in the furrow and the other horse was on the unplowed gound. We listened to jingle of the horse tack and the creaks of the plows. A few minutes later more teams of horses joined in the plowing and one plow hitch had 3 horses. A few minutes later a couple of discs joined in finishing the soil to prepare it for planting. Now the farmer will not be planting the field this fall, but he will rework the field in the spring and plant it to oats so next year the horses will be able plow the ground again.
After watching the horses a while we headed over to the thrashing area. The farmer that owns the land has collected and restored a thrashing machine, a corn shreder and a silo filler. He also has about 30 antique tractors to power these machines. He picked out one of the restored antique tractors and put it on the thrashing machine. He slowly engaged the the belt pulley and the thrashing machine started turning. He throttled up the tractor and the thrashing machine came to full speed. Two people stood tall on the wagon loaded with oat shocks and started feeding them into the machine. I knelt down next to Carter and pointed out the details of the thrashing machine. I would talk about the oat shocks going into the machine to separate the oat grain from the straw. The oat grain would go thru the scale counter and move to the gravity box and the straw would come out the blower pipe building the pile of straw.
We then took a small ice cream break. One of the vendors at the show does homemade ice cream and they have a ice cream maker that makes 5 gallons at a time. It is a father- son team and they will make ice cream and sell it at these small shows. When my Dad celebrated his 70 birthday, he had these people make ice cream for his party. I went and helped them make the ice cream. The recipe comes out of a old church cookbook and makes the best ice cream. It is not diet food!
Carter was getting ready to go home, but we took a few minutes a did a wagon ride around the plowing and thrashing area. It was a very enjoyable day with my grandson.
Prickly Ash Hill Farm 