Salomon Farm Park, Fort Wayne Parks & Recreation

 

From the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation web site:

 

"Salomon Farm Park was launched in 1996 through the generous donation of land by Chris Salomon. Mr. Salomon (now deceased), his daughter Lynn, and Salomon's late wife Maxine had discussed and conceived, perhaps twenty years earlier, the potential of their beautiful landmark farm becoming a historic working farm and park for others to experience. With the assistance and grateful acceptance of the Fort Wayne Board of Park Commissioners and the Parks and Recreation Department, the Salomon family wishes have come true. Construction on the Learning Center began in 2000 and was completed in 2001. Salomon Farm Camp was introduced in the summer of 2002 and sold out in its first year.

 

"The period selected for the operating theme for Salomon Park is the 1930s. This era is a very significant watershed in farm life, as the 1930s represent a lengthy era of similar aspects of agriculture and domestic life. It also is somewhat unique to the "museum" genre as an era with great personal interest to older Americans as well as great opportunities for appeal, education, entertainment, and recreation for younger visitors."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I captured these scenes at the park during Fall Harvest Festivals in 2009 and 2010:

 

2009

 

A threshing machine separates grain from the stems (straw) and hulls (chaff). The first primitive mechanical threshing machines were invented in the 1840s and were hand-powered. They began to replace hand-flailing as the method for separating grain. By the post-Civil-War era the machines had evolved in size and capability, incorporating winnowing along with threshing, so that the larger and more advanced ones required more power than could readily be provided by human or animal muscles, and in the 1870s steam power started to appear on farms.

 

In the earliest years of mechanical threshing, grain still was cut by hand much as it had been in Old Testament times. As farm machines evolved, mechanical reapers were invented. By the time steam power came along, many farmers were using horse-drawn binders to cut grain and bind it into bundles that they stacked into shocks, left in the field to dry, and then transported on wagons to the threshing machine.

 

Bundles are pitched into the feeder, where a conveyor carries them under rotating knives that cut the binder twine. Then the stalks go into the cylinder, where a whirling spiked drum combs the grain kernels out of the hulls. The output from the cylinder passes over oscillating sieves, or grates, where the heavier grain falls through, the chaff is blown upward by a forced draft, and the bulky straw rides along the top. The grain is collected at the lowest point in the machine and elevated to pass through an automatic weighing hopper before being discharged into a bagger or wagon, and the straw and chaff pass out the rear of the machine and into a blower, or wind stacker, that discharges them through a pipe into a stack.

 

 

 

 

Straw stacks, like leaf piles, are kid magnets. Unlike playing in leaves, playing in straw stacks generally culminates in myriad chigger bites.

 

 

 

After the threshing demonstration, they had all the kids gather around. Someone threw a large batch of quarters into the straw stack, and they turned the kids loose.

 

 

 

Turning logs into lumber on a tractor-powered portable sawmill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goats are inquisitive and sociable, and always a hit with school kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grinding grain with animal power. This mule-powered cast-iron mill appears designed to crush and grind ear corn, cobs and all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Members of the Dekalb County Horsemen's Association provided rides in wagons pulled by horses ...

 

 

... and mules.

 

 

 

 

 

A very good display of horse-drawn implements and hand tools used on farms a hundred years ago and more.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, corn is harvested and shelled in the field by combines fitted with special headers. Once, corn was either husked from standing stalks in the field, or the stalks were cut in the field, stacked in shocks to dry, and then brought to the barn where ears were husked and stalks and leaves were saved for winter forage for cows. The first stages of mechanization brought corn binders, either horse-drawn or tractor-powered, that cut the corn and tied it into bundles that were hand-stacked into shocks for drying. Corn shredders like this one mechanized the husking job using belt power from a tractor or gasoline engine.

 

 

The complete stalks are fed into the hopper on top ...

 

 

... the ears are snapped off the stalks and husked and come out a chute into a wagon ...

 

 

... and shredded stalks and leaves are blown out a pipe at the rear of the machine.

 

 

Shelling was a separate operation performed by a simple hand-cranked device, a more sophisticated machine like this one powered by 2 1/2 horsepower International Harvester water-cooled gasoline engine of the 1920s, or a higher-capacity cylindrical sheller, often at the local feed mill or grain elevator. Sometimes cylindrical shellers were mounted on motor trucks and transported from farm to farm by custom operators.

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed your visit to Salomon Farm Park and the Fall Harvest Festival.

Awesome photos, Rob!

 

Great shots, Fall is the best time of the year, imho.

Are those hollyhocks near the top? (BTW I didn't know the name of those until you mentioned them last week)

 

Great shots, Fall is the best time of the year, imho.

Are those hollyhocks near the top? (BTW I didn't know the name of those until you mentioned them last week)

 

I think they are. That's what I've always called them, anyway. The old-time flower gardens are a big part of what I I love about historic villages and farm settlements, and I've been meaning to plant some hollyhocks but haven't gotten around to it. I think it takes them a full season to get established, and they don't start to bear flowers until the second year. I need to read up on them, because I think they'd be a perfect fit for my house and my neighborhood. Sometimes I think I'd like to move back to the farm, except that I'd be lost without my FIOS.