Unusual Discovery in the Woods: An Old Farm Machine

[BicycleTree]

Today I was walking out in the woods. In many places in the woods around here you can find old stone walls going between the trees. Today by one of these stone walls I found a piece of farm machinery. It was heavily rusted and the rubber tires were flaking. It was ten or fifteen feet wide and would have been nearly impossible to get into the forest and fit between the trees, unless dropped by a helicopter. It must have been left there decades ago and the forest grew up around it.

I think it's an automatic seeder.

 

[hypatia]

I love old finds like that...you must be on the east coast{stone walls}? On a trip to the cape, I ran across some walls, so I followed them and found all kinds of neat stuff, including a few graves.

 

[BicycleTree]

Yep, east coast. Never found any graves, but I've found rusted pots and glass bottles, house foundations and a pile of cement. All out in the forest. Farm machinery though... I wonder how old that thing is. How long does it take rubber to start flaking?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

We have a large, pre-55 Ford truck coming down the creek, one part at a time - I know its at least that old. I have one leaf spring, both license plates, two tie rods, U bolts, a spark plug, and a few other parts here and there. I hope to eventually collect the entire truck and put it back together.

For the longest time I couldn't figure out where these things were coming from. I followed the creek to the headwaters and never saw a thing. It turned out that the truck frame was used as the base of a private car bridge. Each year a few parts would fall off and make it down the creek to our place.

MIH and the LA crowd may be interested in hiking to the abandoned Allison Gold Mine, in the San Bernadino Mountains. When I last hiked up there many years ago, the near turn of the century mining equipment was still lying around where it was left back in the twenties or thirties. It was cheaper to leave it there, when the mine closed.

 

[SOS2008]

Yep, east coast. Never found any graves, but I've found rusted pots and glass bottles, house foundations and a pile of cement. All out in the forest. Farm machinery though... I wonder how old that thing is. How long does it take rubber to start flaking?

It's a good thing you clarified which coast...because I was thinking maybe you lived near someone else (with rotting deers and tree stumps, and now pieces of a truck floating down the creek).

The equipment could have ended up like that a few different ways -- I don't think it happened during the Farm Aid Concert, because that seems too recent. Also, I don't think it was from the Championship Tractor Pull during the National Farm Machinery Show either. Maybe it was a result of old George Yokum's going away party as manager of Acme Farm Machinery--it was in the papers as being "a little too jubilant."

 

[Danger]

It turned out that the truck frame was used as the base of a private car bridge. Each year a few parts would fall off and make it down the creek to our place.

Any day now a whole new car should come floating into your arms.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Any day now a whole new car should come floating into your arms.

No, I discovered the truck when hit with a huge blast wave one day. Seriously! A couple of jokers used about ten sticks of dynamite to blast the frame free from its concrete base. They just about took out all of the windows within a mile radius as well. It about scared me to death. I thought the local NG ammo depot had gone up.

 

[Danger]

A couple of jokers used about ten sticks of dynamite to blast the frame free from its concrete base.

Idiots! Everybody knows that you only use 8 if you just want to loosen it.

 

[SOS2008]

Idiots! Everybody knows that you only use 8 if you just want to loosen it.

So I take it you weren't responsible...well maybe not for this explosion...

 

[Danger]

So I take it you weren't responsible...well maybe not for this explosion...

No, not this one. (Do you remember Tunguska?)

 

[SOS2008]

No, not this one. (Do you remember Tunguska?)

I don't think you should be in the same state with Ivan either... So what were we talking about...farm animals, no that's another thread, oh yes, farm implements!

 

[Danger]

So what were we talking about...farm animals, no that's another thread, oh yes, farm implements!

Either/or. They're both just something to be used and left in the field.

 

[Moonbear]

I don't think you should be in the same state with Ivan either... So what were we talking about...farm animals, no that's another thread, oh yes, farm implements!

I better go find the thread on farm animals so I can comment on your new avatar!

 

[Danger]

I better go find the thread on farm animals so I can comment on your new avatar!

I'm getting a novel idea for a petting zoo here...

 

[BicycleTree]

I thought that the farm machinery was particularly symbolic of the changing economy. There are hardly any farms around here anymore (not counting cranberry bogs). You can only wonder. The seeder has been standing there so long that it can no longer even fit between the trees of the forest that was once farmland--ground that it once, perhaps, seeded with crops.