Barney and Birdie, part 2 of 5

Uncle Carl would also take care of minor treatment of Barney and Birdie. Doubtless the things he did had been learned over the years from my grandfather or from neighboring old-timers. I recall him trimming the hooves of Barney and Birdie, using a large pair of pincer-like tongs. And once or twice doctoring with some sort of salve a sore spot on a horse shoulder, from a misfitted horse collar. The salve came from a crude cupboard along the wall on the side of the barn that had once been totally devoted to the horses, but which now housed cows and calves as well. But generally he treated the horses as adjuncts to his tractor operations which by then had taken over many of the farm operations. And not only as adjuncts, and the relics of bygone days, but as a phase of farm culture that was inevitably drawing to a close. Uncle Carl had been using tractors for years, beginning with the large Hart Parrs in his threshing rigs. Later he had the smaller Hart Parrs, but these were the “work-horse” for such heavy work as plowing. And later he had his Farmall tractors. They took over cultivation of corn, discing, pulling the binder in oat harvest, etc. When we arrived on the farm he must have been cultivating corn with his Farmall for some time. I don’t recall seeing the remains of any two-row corn cultivators lying discarded around the farmstead, and a farm the size of the Peterson farm would have required the use of this larger equipment. Such equipment would require three or four horses, a further indication that Barney and Birdie were the remnants of previous farming practice.



















1930 Hart Parr tractor

So Barney and Birdie were used for such operations as could be done by a two-horse team — pulling the walking plow, pulling the “lumber” wagon or hay rack, the mower or hay rake, the manure spreader, the one-row cultivator (still used for such row crops as potatoes, or for occasional garden cultivation), the potato digger, or the rope pulling hay slings up and into the barn. Some of these I never was asked to do. I never for example used the walking plow behind Barney and Birdie, a seldom used operation by the time we were on the farm and relegated to such places as the garden areas, where the use of large tractor-drawn equipment would be inconvenient. But I well remember the trip into Gowrie behind Barney and Birdie pulling the spring wagon, carrying the walking plow for Uncle Carl to use in plowing the garden at grandmother’s house once it had arrived on the scene. The spring wagon was a light wagon used in times past for excursions to Gowrie from the farm, or I suppose various social events. Whether it once had a cover against rain or cold I don’t know — there was no evidence of it when I first encountered it. For that matter I don’t recall seeing any evidence of buggies lying around as forsaken junk on the Peterson farm — maybe they had been not in use for so long that they had disintegrated. I also was never required to drive Barney and Birdie while they pulled the mower, the hay rake or the manure spreader but I have a dim recollection that I used them with the one-row cultivator. I certainly assisted in helping load the old “New-Idea” manure spreader that Uncle Carl had (with old straw stack bottoms for example) but Uncle Carl always did the spreading.

New Idea manure spreader