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Maralee Wernz
12-18-2001 14:30:32
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Re: historic plow specifications in reply to Maralee Wernz, 12-14-2001 13:38:43
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Well, folks, thanks for all the feedback. Your comments helped confirm some of our suspicions, and also planted new seeds (no pun intended) in our heads. However, some clarification might be needed. While we have discussed the wagon ruts idea (thank you Bob-KS and Bob Kerr), there are several of these "furrows" that are fairly consistently distanced from eachother, which would mean that with the kind of depth present several wagons would have had to have used several paths multiple times that were spaced in such a way to make this kind of an impact. Also, any evidence of early wagon ruts would have likely been wiped out by later known agriculture and development activities on the property in question (within the eastern Phoenix, AZ, metro area). There was a comment by Jim regarding historic horse-drawn plowing, and we are entertaining that thought, as well. Any ideas as to what blade sizes and single plows that may have been used at that time that would have created a furrow to a depth of 9" or so (that's the kind of information we could not glean from the old catalogues)? I would also be more interested, Jim, in hearing about plowing draining furrows in heavy clay to help drain water away (just for future reference, since nearby was a local brickyard with large clay resources--perhaps this may have been an issue for the current topic as well). Paul asked in his response what types of crops we thought might have been grown in the area. Sorghum, corn, melons, cotton, possibly sugar cane. So far, furrow distancing for these types of crops (with the exception of sugar cane for which I can find no info., and cotton which comes the closest with furrows 36-40" apart) do not correspond to our distance between furrows of approximately 60" apart from center to center. The furrows themselves are approximately 29" wide at their widest point near the then surface. Of course, some of the original surface has likely been displaced due to post-years agricultural and developmental activities, so it's difficult to say specifically what the true upper width of those furrows may have been. And finally, Jake mentioned a Hawks-Renfroe Breaking plow, Model R (unless he was pulling my leg). If serious, any idea what year these began production, and by what company (if Hawks-Renfroe is not the company)?
Whew!!! I do appreciate and comments that you might have. Thank you for your time and interest.
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