Fixing Farm Machinery
As a little boy, Walter Schmitt helped out in his father's
blacksmith shop in Gresham. He saw first-hand the transition
of farming with horses to farming with tractors.
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 "At
that time … an important part of blacksmithing was
the shoeing of horses and the repair of the horse-drawn
machinery… [When] horses were replaced in the late
20s … one of the things they [the farmers] first had
to do … was to convert the horse-drawn equipment to
tractor use. And that did make quite a little work… I
grew up in the shop. Probably the next work that I done
was in the woodworking part. You usually had wagon, buggies,
and I started working on the wheels and the buggies and
the wagons… Pretty soon I was working in the forge
too. That was during my high school years. The first welding
that I done was in the forge… Then it wasn't long,
in 1931 we got an electric welder." -- Walter
Schmitt  (Quicktime required) |
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| In addition to milling graing,
this mill also provided electric power in Callaway Nebraska.
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Now many farmers have welding shops on their farms so they
can do their own repair work.
Even today, most farmers tinker with machines, fixing their
own equipment whenever possible. In the 1920s, Nebraska farmers
innovated and adapted to changing equipment. Raising livestock
and crops demanded a variety of equipment, ranging from small
and simple to large and complex: corn hooks, plows, hay rakes,
harrows, incubators, discs, grain augers, flex chisels, feed
grinders, haying equipment, reapers, cultivators, livestock
tanks, grain bins, and windmills. As farming became more and
more mechanized, a few farmers turned their inventions into
manufacturing businesses.
Written by Claudia Reinhardt.
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Fixing Machinery
