Salomon Farm Park, Fort Wayne, Indiana
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All Photographs Copyright © 2009-2011 by Robert E Pence
From the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation web site:
"Salomon Farm Park was launched in 1996 through the generous donation of land by Chris Salomon.Mr. Salomon (now deceased), his daughter Lynn, and Salomon's late wife Maxine had discussed and
conceived, perhaps twenty years earlier, the potential of their beautiful landmark farm becoming a
historic working farm and park for others to experience. With the assistance and grateful acceptance
of the Fort Wayne Board of Park Commissioners and the Parks and Recreation Department, the
Salomon family wishes have come true. Construction on the Learning Center began in 2000 and
was completed in 2001. Salomon Farm Camp was introduced in the summer of 2002
and sold out in its first year. "The period selected for the operating theme for Salomon Park is the 1930s. This era is a very
significant watershed in farm life, as the 1930s represent a lengthy era of similar aspects of agriculture
and domestic life. It also is somewhat unique to the "museum" genre as an era with great personal
interest to older Americans as well as great opportunities for appeal, education, entertainment, and
recreation for younger visitors."
I captured these scenes at the park during Fall Harvest Festivals in 2009 and 2010:
2009
A threshing machine separates grain from the stems (straw) and hulls (chaff). The first primitive mechanical threshing machines were invented in the1840s and were hand-powered. They began to replace hand-flailing as the method for separating grain. By the post-Civil War era the machines had
evolved in size and capability, incorporating winnowing along with threshing, so that the larger and more advanced ones required more power than could
readily be provided by human or animal muscles, and in the 1870s steam power started to appear on farms. In the earliest years of mechanical threshing, grain still was cut by hand much as it had been in Old-Testament times. As farm machines evolved,
mechanical reapers were invented. By the time steam power came along, many farmers were using horse-drawn binders to cut grain and bind it into
bundles that they stacked into shocks, left in the field to dry, and then transported on wagons to the threshing machine. Bundles are pitched into the feeder, where a conveyor carries them under rotating knives that cut the binder twine. Then the stalks go into the cylinder,
where a whirling spiked drum combs the grain kernels out of the hulls. The output from the cylinder passes over oscillating sieves, or grates, where the
heavier grain falls through, the chaff is blown upward by a forced draft, and the bulky straw rides along the top. The grain is collected at the lowest point
in the machine and elevated to pass through an automatic weighing hopper before being discharged into a bagger or wagon, and the straw and chaff
pass out the rear of the machine and into a blower, or wind stacker, that discharges them through a movable pipe into a stack.
Straw stacks, like leaf piles, are kid magnets. Unlike playing in leaves, playing in straw stacks generally culminates in myriad chigger bites.
After the threshing demonstration, they had all the kids gather around. Someone threw a large batch of quarters into the straw stack, and they turnedthe kids loose.
Turning logs into lumber on a tractor-powered portable sawmill.
Goats are curious and sociable, and always a hit with school kids.
Grinding grain with animal power. This mule-powered cast-iron mill appears designed to crush and grind ear corn, cobs and all.
2010
Friday was ferociously windy; I'm surprised no toddlers blew away. I suppose it helps that they'relow to the ground. The main use of windmills on farms was to pump water. Some manufacturers provided devices that
could use windmill power to grind flour or meal or operate a washing machine, and some windmills
were purpose-built to spin a small generator that could charge storage batteries for lighting
or other light-duty tasks.
Members of the Dekalb County Horsemen's Association provided rides in wagons pulled by horses ...
... and mules.
A very good display of horse-drawn implements and hand tools used on farms a hundred years ago and more.
Now, corn is harvested and shelled in the field by combines fitted with special headers. Once, corn was either husked from standing stalks in the field,or the stalks were cut in the field, stacked in shocks to dry, and then brought to the barn where ears were husked and stalks and leaves were saved for
winter forage for cows. The first stages of mechanization brought corn binders, either horse-drawn or tractor-powered, that cut the corn and tied it into
bundles that were hand-stacked into shocks for drying. Corn shredders like this one mechanized the husking job using belt power from a tractor or
gasoline engine.
The complete stalks are fed into the hopper on top ...
... the ears are snapped off the stalks and husked and come out a chute into a wagon ...
... and shredded stalks and leaves are blown out a pipe at the rear of the machine.
Shelling was a separate operation performed by a simple hand-cranked device, a more sophisticatedmachine like this one powered by 2 1/2 horsepower International Harvester water-cooled gasoline
engine of the 1920s, or a higher-capacity cylindrical sheller, often at the local feed mill or grain elevator.
Sometimes cylindrical shellers were mounted on motor trucks and transported from farm to farm
by custom operators.
I hope you enjoyed your visit to Salomon Farm Park and the Fall Harvest Festival.