Early Farm Life in Bureau County, Illinois, and ... - New Page 1

Quote by Eric Sloane
“After the house and the big barn, there was always a smaller barn, a springhouse, icehouse,
milk house, wood shed and blacksmith shop. These, with the carriage shed and privy and
chicken houses, all made up a composition of geometric shapes that delighted the eye with its
ability to blend with the contours of rolling land”.
Quote by Isaac Weld, 1798
”Farmers are so certain of their future that they spend a lifetime building barns for future
generations”.
Steam Engines, Threshing Machines, and other Farm Equipment
Many years have passed since Jacob and his brother Henry and their friends and neighbors
and families farmed their fields in central Illinois. And think about Jacob and Henry as teens
farming a small piece of land in Bureau County. What did they grow and how did they
harvest How did they earn income What equipment did they own or use These questions
may not be definitively answered. We may be only able to speculate by integrating what little
we know about them with the history of the times.
Assuming that Heinrich and Elizabeth and Jacob and Henry farmed in the time frame of 1848
and later, it must be assumed that if the farm had any size at all, they must have used horse
drawn implements such as plows. The devices of the time required about two horses or oxen
to pull them, and the farmer walked behind the plow assuring it went in the right direction
and actually cut into the ground. The same can be said about other equipment used to harvest
the grains they perhaps grew.
Or, did they truck farm and simply grow eatable
items that they perhaps sold to villagers such as
those living in Ladd and Princeton and other
surrounding towns.
In any case, life was difficult. The entire day was
spent doing physical labor in the fields. During
these early years, there was no steam powered
equipment. Most work was done manually or with
the assistance of horses.
In the early 1800s, developments occurred in
making steam power. By 1849, steam engines were being built that could power certain kinds
of farm implements such as threshers which heretofore had to be powered by horses. But
these engines were not tractors…. they were simply engines that had to be pulled to the work
site by horses. And, they were big and expensive. At the time, a 4 horsepower engine cost
$635 and weighed about two tons and produced a small steam pressure of about 50 psi.
Thus, it hampered the amount of work that the engine could perform.
By 1855 steam engine manufactures had converted the basic engine to a self propelled
model, but the machine had to be steered by horses pulling the engine to the right or left or
straight ahead as it moved under its own power.
By 1858, these self propelled rigs had been adapted to plowing as well as to threshing.
Chapter 8 Page 12