RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY 



pose, and thus cracked or ground, or be crushed in a 

 primitive hand mill. Where the Indian method of 

 cracking in a stump was employed it was often set out 

 of doors under a tree and the pestle tied to a bough to 

 give it a rebound and save, for the down stroke, the 

 weary arms of the miller. 



Mr. W. E. Pettee of Salisbury invented the first 

 spring-toothed harrow, one of the first steps in making 

 farm work easy. By a peculiar process of tempering 

 the steel he was able to construct a harrow with curved 

 teeth that would spring back and pass over obstacles 

 but not break. He also bought and brought to that 

 town the first mowing machine. 



Up to about 1850 all grain and hay had to be cut and 

 handled entirely by hand. It was no uncommon thing 

 to see six or eight mowers, with rhythmic swing, tread- 

 ing the hay fields from "sun up" to midday. The rak- 

 ing, too, was all done by hand, and it took every member 

 of the household to gather up and haul in the afternoon 

 what the men folks had laid down in the forenoon. 



The first mowing machine was known as a one- 

 wheeler— "awkward, heavy, and clumsy," it is charac- 

 terized by a man who used one. Then came the 

 Eureka machine, with high wheels and the cutter-bar 

 working in front and between them. This type of ma- 

 chine is in use at the present time, though almost en- 

 tirely superseded by the side cutter-bar type. In using 



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