Artifact Archive

BOXED HAND CHURN

This boxed hand churn was used primarily by women on the farm to make butter for household consumption. Like all butter churns, the boxed hand churn involved agitating cream to separate the butter milk from the yellow butter fat. This particular model utilized a simple hand-crank to accomplish this task.

CORN SHELLER

This traditional corn sheller was designed to shell corn kernels to produce animal feed. The device made use of a simple design to save hours of tedious labour. It operates first by feeding a whole cob of corn into the machine. Then, by turning the hand crank, the cob is pulled between the metal-toothed wheels spinning in opposite directions. The kernels are pulled off the cob and fall through a screen into a bucket placed below the device. Unlike their hand-held counterparts which had...

WOODEN CHEESE PRESS

This wooden cheese press would have been familiar on many small-scale North American dairy farms prior to the introduction of industrial cheesemaking. It would have been used in the final step of the cheesemaking process to produce cheese, primarily for home-consumption. As with many aspects of traditional dairy-farming, this tool was used primarily by women on the farm.

RASP

This is an example of an iron rasp that would have been familiar to blacksmiths and farriers throughout history. The rasp is one of the most important items in the farrier’s toolkit, used to file down and even out the horse’s hooves in preparation for shoeing. This is incredibly important for providing an even fit for the horseshoes, and for ensuring that any overhanging hoof does not get caught on anything.

FOOT POWER GRINDER

This is an example of a pedal-powered grinder produced by Deering in the late 19th-century. Using the simple combination of a grindstone turned by the operation of foot-pedals, this device was designed to sharpen the blades of mowing machines. Devices of this sort were first developed in the mid-1800s to provide an easy means of maintaining the sickle sections of the new harvesting machines that were being increasingly adopted on farms across North America. This allowed these considerably...

Riding Cultivator

This is an example of a riding cultivator from circa 1929, of a model produced between 1919 and 1945. Early draft-drawn riding cultivators, like their modern tractor-powered versions, were designed to either stir and pulverize the soil in preparation for seeding, or to control weed growth. For millennia prior to the development of the rotary hoe in 1912, the job of the riding cultivator was done by hand with rudimentary tools like hoes and mattocks. While many farm implement companies in the...

Metal Cheese Press

This is a metal cheese press used in production of (you guessed it!) pressed cheeses such as cheddar and gouda. This device is used in the final step of the cheesemaking process to press the coagulated curds into a solid form. The cheese press featured in this picture is of the kind that would have been familiar on many North American farms in the late-19th and early 20th-centuries, prior to the widespread adoption of industrial cheese production.

Hand Planter

This is an example of a hand planter, used in sowing corn crops. Mechanical hand planters like this particular model were introduced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and were typically known as “bill picks” or “corn jobbers.” Supported by the metal leg, the operator jammed the point of the planter into the ground and pushed the handle forward. The forward-rocking motion caused the ‘bill” on the point to open and deposit the seed in the hill. Then...

Clothes Plunger

This is an example of a clothes plunger, used to wash clothes before the invention of the washing machine. This simple device had a number of names that varied across region and country, such as “dolly plunger” or “possing stick.” The basic function of the device was simple: laundry soaking in the wash-tub was “plunged” with the metal clothes plunger in a process that utilized suction to drive the wash water through dirty clothing. Their function and...

Plow

This is a traditional horse-drawn steel plow that would have been familiar on most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century farms. One of the most ancient and important agricultural implements, the plow is used to cultivate soil in preparation for sowing seed. Prior to the domestication of draft-animals that could pull plows, agriculture was limited to areas like the Nile Valley and modern-day Iraq with light, nutrient-rich soil that could easily be turned by hand-held hoes. The plow was...

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