Tag: Rural

This old wheel rolls right in with my old theme week. After being on the road for a while yesterday, it would have been a much bumpier and rough ride with old wooden wheels than rubber tires. Yet wheels like this carried settlers across the nation and were a critical part of survival. Wooden wheels of different sizes were part of their daily life for transportation and work.

The earliest known examples of wooden spoked wheels are in the context of the Andronovo culture, dating to ca 2000 BC. Soon after this, horse cultures of the Caucasus region used horse-drawn spoked-wheel war chariots for the greater part of three centuries. They moved deep into the Greek peninsula where they joined with the existing Mediterranean peoples to give rise, eventually, to classical Greece after the breaking of Minoan dominance and consolidations led by pre-classical Sparta and Athens. Celtic chariots introduced an iron rim around the wheel in the 1st millennium BC. The spoked wheel was in continued use without major modification until the 1870s, when wire wheels and pneumatic tires were invented.

I much rather look at wooden wheels than a pile of rubber tires especially considering the skills the wheelwright needed to make the spokes, rim and hub and to fit them all together.

Wooden Wheel Spokes

Picture of the Day for August 21, 2012

August 21, 2012

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Since I had an old windmill yesterday, I thought maybe this week would be an ‘old’ theme. And this barn fits right into the old theme, even though this view looks fairly good, the other sides have not fared as well since there are missing or broken boards.

Besides the old boards, the foundations of the older barns are interesting and vary from area to area, from round rocks in cement, to limestone rocks or all wooden foundations. And the function and location of doors vary so greatly too.

Rustic Old Brown Barn on Rock Foundation

Picture of the Day for August 20, 2012

August 20, 2012

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There are less of the old style windmills gracing the landscape around my area. Some that I used to take pictures of are now gone, but most in my area were the Aermotor windmill, with the name proudly stamped on the tail. I didn’t realize Aermotor Windmill has continuously manufactured windmills since 1888 and is the only windmill manufacturer still left in the USA.

The Aermotor only sold dozen windmills the first year and was called mockingly by competitors as the new “mathematical” windmill. But the new “mathematical” windmill incorporated principles learned from previous experiments and had great lifting power due to the back gearing which allowed the wheel to make about 3 revolutions for each stroke.

By 1892, Aermotor sold 20,000 windmills and the “mathematical” windmill’s image had changed from a joke to a true necessity and was on its way to becoming the dominant windmill dotting the landscape.

Mass production helped lower the price and enclosed gear case introduced in 1915 reduced maintenance to once a year instead of weekly.

Aermotor’s founder, La Verne Noyes, donated nearly two and one half million dollars in 1918 to establish scholarships at many colleges and universities for veterans of the World War. These scholarships are still available today.

After Noyes died in 1919, the company was left to a trust and over the years, was acquired by different companies and moving the manufacturing site to different states, until it settled in San Angelo, Texas in 1986..

I know this windmill is older than I am since it still has Chicago stamped on the tail by the name, but even if it’s old, I love looking at them since I love old, rustic things (except when it is my old, creaky body).

Aermotor Windmill

Picture of the Day for August 13, 2012

August 13, 2012

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Coming back from an appointment in town today, I took some back roads and I was on the lookout out for farm scenes that might be photogenic in the fall when the leaves turn. But there are some rustic barns that don’t need colorful leaves to make them stand out, especially when the sky is filled with a variety of clouds.

Rustic Wooden Barn

Picture of the Day for July 30, 2012

July 30, 2012

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The sun is shining on the start of another work week and for farmers that might mean combining oats, baling hay or milking cows. But most of them didn’t have the weekend off so the work days just continue rolling one after another.

The method of farming work has changed over the years becoming more automated but I can still remember my great grandfather using milk cans when he milked his small herd of dairy cows.

A Glimpse of Milking Past

Picture of the Day for July 28, 2012

July 28, 2012

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They often talk about things on the threatened list of being extinct, and around here wooden barns would be on the endangered list as they are coming rarer and rarer to find as they are being replaced by the metal pole barns instead.

The wooden barns have a different feel to them, a warmer feel, but also they normally contained several functional areas; area to milk the cows, stable for the horses, hayloft to store the hay, a granary, and area to store equipment.

But times have changed, methods have changed, and existence of the small farmers having a variety of animals to feed his family have vanished but every once in a while you stumble across an old wooden barn and you catch a glimpse of history and you wonder what memories it holds.

Rustic Wooden Barn