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Tool and its purpose both outdated

Forgotten Tool: Many farms today no longer have cultivators in the shed.

March 31, 2022

1 Min Read
antique John Deere cultivator
FROM DAYS GONE BY: This John Deere cultivator removed weeds from fields with old-fashioned steel cultivator shovels. Tom J. Bechman

Time not only passed by this horse-drawn row crop cultivator. For most farms, it passed by cultivators altogether.

John Deere made this cultivator. How many horses pulled it in the field? How many rows did it cultivate at one time?

Email your answers to both questions to [email protected] or mail them to: Indiana Prairie Farmer, 599 N, 100 West, Franklin, IN 46131. Include your mailing address. If you answer correctly, you will be entered in the gift card drawing.

Cleaning out barns

Some of you apparently didn’t look at the manure spreader while forking out manure! The spreader in the March issue of Indiana Prairie Farmer, featured here online, drew more wrong answers than any “Forgotten Tool” so far. It wasn’t made by New Idea or David Bradley.

John Deere made this one, sold to a farmer in Hancock County, Iowa, in 1938. Of all correct manufacturer answers, only two people correctly identified it as a Model E.

Congratulations to Richard Nottingham, Alexandria, Ind. He won this month’s gift card drawing.

Dean McCloskey, Galveston, Ind., says his grandfather’s John Deere Model E manure spreader is tucked away in a barn. His dad, Allen, at just 8 years old, went with his father, Oscar, to the Armstrong-Landon John Deere dealer in Kokomo, Ind., in 1941. Upstairs, a gentleman was setting up a new John Deere Model E spreader.

“Oscar, if you want a manure spreader, you better buy this one, because we won’t be getting any more of ‘em,” he said. War threatened. Dean’s grandfather made an impulse buy and purchased the spreader. He pulled it with a John Deere B.

Thanks for the great story, Dean. We will also send you a gift card.

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