Farm Museum
570 Main St B0S 1M0 Lawrencetown, NS, Canada

With apologies to all especially Jan Miller, I must correct my mistake on this post. The decision on whether or not to change the name of the farm museum at the AVE will be made at the Spring Meeting of the Farm Museum Committee. For now it is still known as simply the Farm Museum. It was founded by Doug Miller more than 20 years ago.

The Farm Museum is now closed for the season. We open again in June 2020.

Yesterday Leon Caldwell from the Farm Museum took part in the "No Tool Like an Old Tool" demonstration of traditional hand tools at the Sinclair Inn Museum in Annapolis Royal. Leon brought several agricultural implements including a soil fluffer, a milking stool, and a butter churn.

The EX may be over for another year but the Farm Museum is open Thursday to Sunday 10-4 until Labor Day. Look forward to meeting you. Please don't forget to sign the visitor's log book.

McCormick-Deering wire Hay Baler As most of you know, McCormick-Deering was never a company itself, but the trademark name of a line of tractors and farm machinery manufactured by the International Harvester Co. International Harvester began selling McCormick-Deering binding machines and tractors in 1923. (www.farmcollector.com). The following 2016 article by Herman Van der Vos of Bozeman, Montana gives an excellent perspective on how a baling crew operated a McCormick-D...eering hay baler in the 1940s: It took a crew of six men to operate the baler. Three men were on the stack. Two brought the loose hay near the table and one pitched the hay onto the table (not too much, so as to overwhelm the table man, but always enough to keep the baler well supplied). The table man (standing on the table) had to slide the hay under the plunger every time the plunger was in raised position. The plunger packed the hay into the bale chamber. We only used one wire man. He would push the wires through the slotted block, and then reach over the bale chamber and tie the wires. There was a trick to fast tying. He would hold the looped end in his right hand and slip the other through the loop with his left hand. Then he would bend the wire 180 degrees, hold the bend in his right hand and with his left hand, grab the longer part, make two revolutions around the end and bend back the remaining end 180 degrees. The blocks were three layers of 1-inch lumber. The center was vertical and both sides were horizontal with 1/2-inch slots where the wire went through. To determine the proper length of the bale, there was a painted line on the side of the bale chamber. When the block approached that line, it was the wire man’s duty to call block to the table man. The table man had to stop feeding hay into the baler and make sure there was no hay in the chamber. The wire man had already placed a block in the block holder (a hinged holder that held the block in a horizontal position). The table man would tip it forward to a vertical position and the plunger would come down and push it into the bale chamber. It took a good table man to feed the baler just right to produce one bale per minute. The sixth crew member carried bales away from the baler and stacked them. It was his job to estimate the weight of each bale and adjust the screws accordingly. Hay bales had to be 100 pounds; straw bales, 70 pounds. It was hard work to do 16-20 tons per day. (www.farmcollector.com) The McCormick-Deering baler in the Farm Museum used an automatic wire knotter. The automatic wire knotters tie bales by twisting two wires together. The first wire must be delivered at the exact time to meet the second, and they must both be delivered in the twisting gear slot in exactly the right order and proper adjustment. DeLong, H.H., The Field Baler: Operation and Costs (1951) (http://openprairie.sdstate.edu/agexperimentsta_circ/84). See more