As most of you know by now, a few weeks ago we were working on the earthworks for our property. It was done over the course of several days and on one of those days I took a break from working (I was watching and directing mostly...) to explore the property.
While I had previously walked the property a few times, there is really no way to notice everything on a property this size in a short period of time.
This time, I was with my father-in-law and we were driving around the pasture areas and I was sort of telling him where the property boundaries were along with some other details. I'm pretty sure he was the one that spotted this gem sitting just inside the tree line.
What was this thing that was growing between several trees? Some of the trees even had distorted trunks because of it. It took us a few minutes to figure it out but when we saw the tubes running down the one side of it we figured out it was some sort of seeder. It is also very old. So old that the wheels have wooden spokes!
One side of the seeder had a bunch of these weird tubes running down from the seed box.
The wheels were wooden spoked. I am surprised there was anything left.
I did a bit of preliminary research on this seeder and the symbol on the side plate is that of International Harvester. The company was founded in 1902 and the majority of the company was sold off in 1985. What remained was renamed Navistar International Corporation in 1985.
A little bit of a different view. On the right side, you can get a better idea of how many of those tubes there would have been when it was in better condition. There is also a lever in the center for adjusting depth or the seed drop rate.
From what I gather so far, this was likely a grain seeder and, with the wooden wheels, I imagine that it is around 100 years old give or take a decade. In the 20's and 30's, most of the farm machinery came equipped with metal spoked and rimmed wheels so this is likely older than that, although I could be wrong.
Anyways, I feel like this is a pretty cool discovery and I think I might dig it out and see how it looks. With a bit of love it might make a nice lawn ornament. It would be great to have a piece of history sitting there as a reminder of how much things have changed in the last century.
Have you found anything that was really cool on your homestead property of travels? What do you think of this thing?