Generally my barn pictures are outside shots since I am shooting from the road, but once in a while I get to venture inside an old wooden barn. Each barn in unique with knot holes letting light seeping through or how it is built.
This barn has a rare piece of loose hay equipment called a “mower” and not a mower that cuts hay, but a platform which distributes the hay. Most older barns had a system of pulleys and tracks for the hayfork to raise the loose hay up from the wagon to the barn haymow and across the barn and tripped to drop the hay to the floor. The platform of the mower tips to either side to dump the hay closer to the side walls so required less pitching by hand when stacking the loose hay in the barn.
The exact year when this platform mower was added to the barn is unclear but the article I found about the mower was in the November 1921 issue of the Popular Mechanics magazine. The platform mower can be seen in the upper right corner and a closer view in the second picture.
The Haymow
The Platform of the Mower
