The Farmer
Tools of the Trade
Farmers grow crops and raise animals to provide food and other goods. Farmers have many tasks to complete, and even more tools used for these tasks. Many farmers specialize on certain crops or animals, but some of the most common tasks in the 19th century include:
Planting or sowing seeds. A farmer would need a seed drill to make a hole for each seed. This one is only about a foot long. Some enterprising farmer got tired of having to bend down for each hole and invented a seed drill that allowed the seeds to be put in at the top and dropped down to ground level. This one comes up to about armpit height on an average adult. The process of putting seeds into the ground after the holes were made might look like this.
Once the crop grows, the farmer has to cut it down with a scythe.
Then the wheat, or other crop, has to be gathered up into bundles. Notice that everyone helps out around the farm, even an old woman and a child. This process takes a lot of work, so someone invented the cradle scythe so that the wheat would get caught as it fell, eliminating this final step.
Wheat is primarily grown to be made into flour and the first step is to separate the wheat seeds from the rest of the plant. This is done with a flail. The person flailing the wheat essentially just hits the wheat over and over until the wheat seeds are separated. Notice that a boy does this task.
Chickens are one of the animals raised on a farm, for both their eggs and their meat. The young girl here is feeding the chickens. After she does that, she will probably collect their eggs using an egg basket. Notice how it curves down on the sides and up in the middle. This is to help keep the eggs from running into each other and breaking.
