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Listeners write in about a fondness for palm nailers, German translations, and insulating behind masonry.
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"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
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Vacuum-powered framistat! I've seen dozens!
or it could be a old molasses lick wheel feeder for cattle....
Reminds me of corn shellers or nut hullers.
You might be close. It reminds me of much larger rock milling stuff in old mines - butthey weere a lot larger
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Hard to tell about the scale of the picture... Maybe those stones in the background are 12" riprap ;-)
That doesn't happen to have a couple of sheaves (pulleys) hidden under the lattice work (for lack of a better term) does it?
Any chance of a close up of the lettering and one from the bottom side?
got me curious now. ;-)
Edited 3/31/2007 10:18 pm by dovetail97128
Do the wheels move together or independent?
Is there anything inside the wheels?
Is it possible that it's just a simple caster?
“The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds..” – Hume
On the far side of the device is the place where the grate-shaker handle from the woodstove goes. When a man came in covered in mud and sweat after a grueling day of bossing his subs, he'd plop in a chair on the porch, his wife would kneel at his feet, insert the shaker handle and rotate the wheels until his muddy boots came off. She would have already hauled 30 gallons of water from the pump, heated them on the woodstove and prepared his bath. While he lounged in the slipper tub, his wife would feed their 13 children, milk the cow (squirt to the cat), and weed the kitchen garden before handing him a towel warmed over the woodstove, then serve his meal of T-bone, spuds, and a small green salad with ranch dressing.
Ah, the good old days!_______________________________________________________________
It ain't what you make, it's what you don't spend
I knew I was born a century to late!
Me, too! I would have loved to live in the golden age when women weren't expected to work.
They're expected to work now? I've got to have a little talk with our labor commissioner<G> Outside of the gates the trucks were unloadin',
The weather was hot, a-nearly 90 degrees.
The man standin' next to me, his head was exploding,
Well, I was prayin' the pieces wouldn't fall on me.
"Me, too! I would have loved to live in the golden age when women weren't expected to work."And what you describe is after she happily spent the entire day canning the harvest, mixing kneading and baking bread and rolls, mending the children's clothes, sweeping and scrubbing the floors, cleaning and refilling the kerosene lamps, boiling water for laundry and then scrubbing, wringing and hanging said laundry, feeding up the horses, goats, pigs and chickens, butchering five chickens, crawling through the root cellar for those spuds for husband all the while keeping the children from killing each other or themselves.Oh yes, to be the fairer sex.
LOL, your description accurately describes my youth! When i was a little girl, i was set on the log in the sawbuck while my parents used a misery whip to cut firewood chunks. One of my parents would go whack a piece of a deer off the quarter hanging in the shop on the way in to make supper, which was a romantic affair lit by Coleman lantern. We were rustic even by Montana standards.
You had Coleman lanterns?
Upscale neighborhood.
Joe H
In Michigan in the eighties, bought with my ex an old farm house with ten acres, wanted to be a self sufficient farmer. Had no electricity, no heat, no plumbing. I'll tell you the phone company worker was some pissed when he came to install a phone in the house (the first ever) and had to use a hand auger to drill through the brick face of the house. I had big ambitions, but no money and a man who had a loose notion of what work was. When you live like that recreation is rare and dear for those who wish to make it work. Tried it again in Maine with him and then just gave up on the idea and on marriage altogether.Oh how I look back on those days and oft think if I only knew then what I know now.
"...if I only knew then what I know now."
Yeah! Me too.If only.
Rich BeckmanOn the other hand, things have worked out good before it was over, so I'd be afraid to change anything
I still have the '66 Dodge Power Wagon i bought with Husband #1 with the intention of moving to Namu, BC, and raising an adopted, multi-ethnic family on an organic farm. That boy was a helluva worker, but married to his gov't job, so our roads diverged and i took the one less traveled by, but we are still soulmates. Silly boy gave me a $2000 check for Christmas a couple years ago, trying to help out with the expense of Husband #3's last ride. I use it for a bookmark...makes me smile at his goodness, if not his priorities.Ja, i also wish i knew then what i know now, but when you look at what you know now, aren't you pretty, freaking amazed? I delight in your well-written posts fulls of savvy and not much self-worship; that doesn't come easy, when it comes at all. Farming in Michigan and Maine, though...what were you thinking?!?!
Well now, Michigan is full of nice loamy land, hence its popularity with multi-generation farmers. I remember when I hired a guy down the road to plow up a piece of the land we had so I could put in a garden. He brought over his John Deere D and the sod was so thick that it nearly tipped him every time he dug in. I was going to be a writer long time ago, but then I had kids and they had to eat and the then DH liked impressing the ladies with fine talk and swift moves more than he liked working. One husband and three kids was enough to cure me forever of that whole marriage thing.Anyway, I have a problem with sitting in one spot too long, have to get out and move around and lift things and work myself tired or I'm a nervous wreck, so writing for a living wouldn't work for me.
I was thinking of the length of the growing season more than dirt. One can make dirt, but i only get about 90 frost-free days where i live and 13" of rain, so gardening is just a sign of insubordination as far as Mother Nature is concerned. Visqueen is The Great Equalizer.Looks like we are sisters in ADD, though i can sit like crazy after a sustained outburst of jaw-dropping productivity. That doesn't bode well for having a real job, so i've been self-employed since the last time i got fired. I became a woodworker, though...that framing looks like actual work if carried to 40-hour/week extremes. I know only one other woman with her own nail apron around these parts, a trim carp and a good one, naturally, whom i met through a builder who bought a bunch of my woodwork. I actually got a bachelor's in Shop Class. Since the grand total of my writing winnings is $900, i can understand choosing the trades, but i'm curious: how'd you get your foot in the door after life as a scribe?
A lot of things got me into this, some accidental, some intentional and not a lot planned early on. I always loved outdoor work, like a good challenge and appreciate the tangibility that handiwork gives; "Yes I did that and it looks good." Not abstract, not up for argument or reinterpretation; tradeswork, whether mechanics or carpentry is the expression of the human mind in the most existential way I can think of. That I like. Although I can argue a blue streak on social philosophy, economics or history and love every minute of it, there is nothing like taking raw matter and making it into something entirely different, useful and real.As a child I was the one who took apart everything to see what's inside and then put it back together to try to make it work again. I was the one who had a better idea to make my bike look better, or run better. Although writing a poem or a good essay is rewarding and useful at times, it doesn't pay well either. I could have taken those skills and gone off to college to law school, which I would have done had I been a cooperative child at home. But I wasn't and left early.I was raised in a very strict, old school family where girls had few options and were supposed to be eager and happy to live confined in a house tied to kids and her man. I tried this route to please my family, but hated it and also choose the wrong man for the job as well. Anyway, strapped with three kids, no skills and little formal education, I decided the trades were the ticket to making a living. Also, I didn't fit in with the typical office clique or the routine work that lower skilled women have for career choices. It just bored me to tears and also angered me when I was expected to show appreciation while being underpaid and often poorly treated. I met up with a carpenter during a stint at an employment agency who was having some personal difficulties. I hired him to work on my place and also did the usual following around and asking questions about how'd you do that? why'd you do that?. We talked and after awhile of talking over time he said, "If you can sell 'em I can build 'em." Well, it hasn't been quite that easy. I can sell and he can build, but of course there's more to this business than that. For one thing, starting out small, we both work together in the field. I got us a gig working for a small framing company that built garages and additions, then we have branched out from there. I also jumped into a building tech degree program at the local tech school, which I'm about four classes shy of finishing. But I've put that off for now.Anyway, I like what I do and find it challenges me intellectually and physically. Hopefully I'll make a decent living at it too someday. This is a tough business and often I wonder what the hell I'm doing in it, but inherent in that question often lies the answer -- I'm trying once again to put the pieces together, to understand this beast and get it under my control.
I thought this was hard enough solo; i can't imagine trying to bring kids along at the same time. How'd that work out? I can't remember we had much to disassemble when i was a kid, but i threw the hand-me-down dolls in the outhouse one day when i was about ten. Luckily they weren't missed for awhile so i wasn't forced to retrieve them, but a career counselor might have read something into their unnatural death. The folks' aspirations for me centered on a fellow who drove snowplow for the State. It sounds a lot like your start - did you have religious overtones, too? - but we had a bookmobile, thank god, bec i was too cranky for anyone to let me ride their bike. How did you manage to become so literate? How long have you worked with the other carp? When you talk about selling, do you mean you sell your services, or have you gotten to the point where you work on spec, too? Is the building tech program a launching pad toward...what? Good luck controlling the beast. I tend to agree with Helen Keller that security is mostly an illusion.
"Me, too! I would have loved to live in the golden age when women weren't expected to work, followed by your discription of her day!
I worked for a farmer while in high school. They had 12 children!
We'd go in to eat dinner(lunch for you city folk) and the farmer would ask his wife if there was anything for desert, sometimes yes, sometimes no. When the answer was no, he shot back with a "what, you been sitting around here all day and no desert"
Farmers wife would always respond with the same answer, I'll go out and ride the tractor around all day and you come in here and take care of the children, prepare the meals, tend to the garden, the chickens the ........... Funny, he never took her up on it!
Doug
Doesn't sound fair to me...it's aboot time wimmins pulled their wieght....DOH!!
did I just type that out loud???I don't Know what I am doing
But
I am VERY good at it!!
You forgot shearing the sheep, washing and carding the wool, spinning the thread, and weaving & knitting the clothing & socks...
The good old days!
and don't forget the sheep de-nadding day...arrrgh, don't get yer fingers stuck in the bands<G>tail docking day was always a treat, too! Outside of the gates the trucks were unloadin',
The weather was hot, a-nearly 90 degrees.
The man standin' next to me, his head was exploding,
Well, I was prayin' the pieces wouldn't fall on me.
"" and don't forget the sheep de-nadding day...arrrgh,"" Oh yes, and all the womans comments about the "Animal " they would really like to be doing that to.
When I taught at Rutgers, animal care to pre-vet students (almost all girls) the comments would curl guys' hair - "This one's for you, Fred!"
""Laughing" I have seen more than one "tough " young farmer slink out the side door when it came to that activity. The "Fair and Delicate Sex" can be downright cruel and cutting sometimes when they are gathered together.
;-)
I sold most of my lambs as hothouse - ~40 lbs. - so only docked the keeper ewe lambs. Decided by dams' records, docked them in the jugs at about a day old - much less muss & fuss!
Ram lambs graced the most expensive plates in New York restaurants - a great niche market.
Are you available?
Joe H
So - what did you find most attractive?The squirt of milk for the cat, the T-bone steak, or something to do with the thirteen childruns???
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
The notion of owning my own slave I guess.
Joe H
Am i available?I will be, right after i clean the chimney, put a new cover on the hoophouse, make new screens for the solarium, trim out the entryway, install the bathroom vanity, plant the onions, hang a fan in the living room, and get some hairball remedy into the cats.Then i'll be ready to party!
roof drain
Would that thing have been pulled (probably in gangs of 6 or 8) behind a tractor across freshly plowed fields to form raised rows for planting peas, beans, strawberries or other crops that grow that way?
That's a hog oiler.
Edited to say: I posted before reading the thread. It really is a hog oiler. I used to have one.
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
~ Voltaire
Edited 3/31/2007 11:50 pm by hasbeen
"It really is a hog oiler. I used to have one."Cool.What's a hog oiler??????
Rich BeckmanThis signature line intentionally left blank.
It really is a hog oiler. I used to have one.
A hog, or an oiler?_______________________________________________________________
It ain't what you make, it's what you don't spend
Give that man a Kewpie doll!
It takes an Iowa boy to know the answer to that question.
Doug
Now I gotta call my brother in Missouri and ask him if he's been keeping up on oiling his hogs.
"Hog".Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays ?
Hey, don't look at me, I'm mentally retireded.
Like rich said ...
now what is it again ?
and just how is it put to use?
http://www.antiquemystique.com/pages/7583_jpg.htm http://www.rootsweb.com/~iamills/Peoplemisc/inventions_hog_oiler.htm Darn I hate not knowing some things that may be important some day.
<Darn I hate not knowing some things that may be important some day.>
LOL!
"Those that don't remember history are condemned to repeat it" - perfectly appropriate here.
Forrest - gotta' work on these dry, crackly hogs
Nothin' worse than a hog that seizes up on ya!
Hog oiler? I've heard of a greased pig, though i've never seen one with zerks.
Bingo!
Probably pre EPA, it also got rid of used engine oil at the same time it kept your hogs greased up.
Joe H
A little splash of insecticide mixed in with used crankcase oil... just what everyone wants as a sort of marinade for future pork chops.; )
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
~ Voltaire
The oil is the insecticide.
Crude stinks enuff to do the job, used too.
Joe H
May be, but I know for sure some oldsters also added insecticide.
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
~ Voltaire
It's a Smith Valveless Hog Oiler. Used to oil your hogs skin to protect them from insects. My father and uncle owned an IH dealership and several of these were left over from a by gone era. You could also buy them fron Sears & Roebuck.
When I was a kid we had a few pigs to "back up", eat the grain the cattle knocked out of the feeders on to the ground, and used the old oil from a tractor oil change to fill the hog oiler.