Following The Plow
(Page 2 of 5)
May/June 1974
By the Mother Earth News editors
We rarely use another horse-drawn tool—our harrow—but I should mention that it's a flat rig with solid iron teeth which is dragged over plowed land to smooth out the lumps.
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WHERE TO PURCHASE PLOW TOOLS
Writing this article has been a lot of fun, and one of the nicest experiences of all was my visit to our town's hardware store. Fomby's Hardware has been owned and operated for over 50 years by Mr. Oswald Fomby . . . with the assistance (for the last mere 35 years) of Mr. Billy Corry.
These two gentlemen—and they are just that—took me to the back of their establishment for our talk. I peeked up in passing at the long straps, plow handles, chains, chairs, stovepipes and multitude of other articles overhead, and breathed in the special smell of a hardware store . . . which I think of as a mixture of leather, stove polish and oil. In the rear—amid rolls of wire, wheelbarrows and the like—we sat, chatted and drank tiny cups of coffee poured from a French pot while Mr. Fomby and Mr. Corry told me stories of our town when it was young.
I finally got around to asking Mr. Fomby about the availability of plowing equipment, and he told me that many of the manufacturers had simply gone out of business. When I speculated that increased demand might stimulate the supply, he shook his head and said, "Not in our day, it won't." I wonder.
Articles that are still to be found have, of course, increased tremendously in cost. Mr. Fomby gave me the cost of some items he sold years ago and compared them to today's price tags:
According to Mr. Fomby, a person in our neck of the woods who's seriously interested in obtaining horse-drawn plows can visit almost any farm where a tractor is parked and find all sorts of implements back in a dusty barn. The owner would probably be only too glad to let the articles go for a reasonable price if he thought they were going to be used to till the earth. (He added that he himself had a full set which he might be interested in selling.) Ads in local newspapers and farm magazines would, I'm sure, also bring results.
The friendly hardware dealer then suggested that a blacksmith—if you can find one—will make horse-drawn plows for a small fee. These craftsmen are hard to locate and many are quite elderly, but they're still around (often in large cities where they forge horseshoes for rodeos, riding clubs and horse lovers) and might be able to construct plowshares and other necessary iron parts. This would probably be a last alternative, but it's a thought nevertheless.
In spite of Mr. Fomby's pessimism, I still believe that if enough interest is shown in acquiring draft animal plows and attachments, the supply will very soon have to meet the demand. Perhaps I'm too optimistic about this new way of life . . . but I don't think so.
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