Horsepower

Check this out. This is from a wonderful 1924 book called "A Popular History of American Invention" by Waldemar Kaempffert. This book has taken up permanent residence in the bathroom (TMI). Here's one of my favorite pictures in the book. It's from a chapter titled "FARMING BY MACHINE." The caption says:

"From 1841, when D. A. Church built what was probably the last of the early harvester-threshers, until about 1881, harvesting and threshing were regarded as separate and distinct operations. But when California became the greatest wheat-raising State, labor sufficient to harvest, haul, and thresh wheat in the old way could not be secured. Combined harvesters and threshers ("combines") were built. These were drawn by great teams of horses, as here shown. Gasoline-engines were used to supply the power for the machinery, the horses being used only for hauling. nowadays tractors take the place of horses."

Beekeeping's Venerable History in Ypsilanti: 1863 Diary

Beekeeping in Ypsilanti goes back a ways. Way back. Take a look at these excerpts from the 1863 diary of a farmer's wife--Mary Seaver, who helped work the old Seaver Farm just south of town. You remember the Seaver Farm: it's "on the west side of Huron Street, north of the U.S. Post Office," says the Courier.

Wednesday July 15. So cold we had to have a fire and dress in thick clothes.

Thursday July 16. Put the bees in the new hive this eve. Got 35 lbs of honey out of the new hive. Very cold all day. Frost at night + it killed one [piece?] of [husband] Hiram's corn.
. . . .
Sunday July 19. Tonight pleasant looks like rain. Mrs. Starkbridge told us our bees were swarming but they were leaving the hive. James Holms + Fannie [Shandnou] called. James stayed to tea.
. . . . (one more just for atmosphere)
Thursday November 19. This forenoon, Julie, Mattie, Hiram Jamie + myself took a walk to look at the farm, came back, took dinner, cracked nuts & jokes. Then all rode all round the city then left the girls at the depot, kissed them good bye and came home."

There you have it. Beekeeping was a part of Ypsilanti since at least the Civil War.

Allie McCullough, 1874 Ypsi Teen Diarist and Locavore, Giggles at the iPhone

Here's part of today's NYT's full-page ad for apps for your iPhone, one of which is the $3.99 "Locavore" app. "Eating local fruits and vegetables is healthy for you," the ad helpfully explains. "Now your iPhone will tell you what food is fresh in your area and direct you to a nearby farmer's market."

The app is symptomatic of a longing for groundedness and meaning absent from the average daily cubicle-worker's life, where meaning and personal accomplishment at the end of 8 hours of pecking on a keyboard is absent.

The app also presumes the user's ignorance of a farmer's market in one's own hometown, a situation that would have been laughable to 1874 Ypsilanti teen diarist Allie McCullough. Regular readers know well that she spent much of her free time receiving calls from friends, making calls on friends, or participating in social events with friends at the Lyceum, at Sunday school, or at gatherings. Instead of consulting her iPhone, Allie would just have asked one of the many friends she had contact with throughout the day where the market was.

But likely she knew already. Advertisements in the papers of her day usually lack addresses. Everyone knew where Samson's variety store was, where the post office was, where the grocers were (who accepted local farm produce to sell, which ended up on Allie's table long before "locavore" became trendy). It would have been silly to print an actual address. Ypsilantians were deeply tied to the community.

Now we need a shiny gadget to tell us where, in our own hometown, we can go and buy arugula, in the modern-day farmer's market cruiser's impotent tribute, via pricey purchases, to people who actually still work the earth and receive the tangible successes and failures from it that our own lives lack.

Allie would have laughed at our foolishness.

Mystery Artifact: Corn Husker

Sandy D. correctly guessed that last week's Mystery Artifact is a corn husker! Yay!

You can see it here in the 1902 Sears Catalog. It's the sixth glove down, just one of the many models of corn husking gloves offered.

They're sold singly, in pairs, and in lots. So it's reasonable to deduce that people wore these on one or both hands. Holding the dried corncob in one hand, they gripped it with their other hand, and rasped off the hard dry kernels.

There's also a big box-style crank corn husker at the Museum which did the job in a fraction of the time. Either the glove was used by poorer farmers who couldn't afford the box husker, or the gloves were used in conjunction with it, to clean off any cobs the machine did not fully strip. The metal ridge in the palm side of our glove forced off the kernels.

This week's Mystery Artifact appears in a photo. What, pray, is this man doing?

At one time it was done all over town, and was an important job. But what is it? Do you recognize this action?

Take your best guess and good luck!

Answer, and a New Mystery Artifact, next Friday night!