[SEL] Old IHC threshing and plowing days at Mike Burns

[Robert Jacobs]

With the display I am shooting for next year it will be very hard to get
away.  It sure was fun seeing those old steam traction engines going
across the field with all 8 bottoms down making it look easy.
 
I would love to see cable plowing some time.  Was that ever done in the
U.S. of A. ????
 

Gotta  put my 2 cents in here,

As a youngster, traveling around Michigan with my folks, My father would
often try to "track down" steam engines and oil pulls he knew of in his
youth.  Many Sundays were spent traversing old roads in the thumb area as
that was his old stomping grounds.

He related to us stories of the "prairie farm" area in the thumb.  I
remember him telling me of farm crews who, after setting the engine/tractor
in the furrow, bottoms down, they would tie off the wheel and let it go. 
Now I'm sure they had to tend to the engine etc. but according to dad, it
was pretty easy running for long distances.  He once tracked down a Huge
Port Huron engine that he thought was one of the engines used.  

I was only five or six at the time, but the story has stuck with me all this
time and being rather small myself, the Port Huron, (in the process of being
restored at the time), was a massive and very impressive thing.  I do
remember dad putting me in the firebox where I stood straight up without
touching anything (and of course mother yelling about how dirty I was
getting).

If there's any truth to the stories I was raised amongst, then I'd have to
say that cable plowing was indeed done here in Michigan, and if you've ever
traveled in the Michigan thumb area, and taken the time to observe the soil,
you'd find some very very heavy black loam.


Bob 
Some people call me Sweet Ole' Bob,
others just use the initials!
Carrowor2002 at att.net