What’s Old is new again

You may be excused if you don’t know what this is.

On the weekend, I met an old classmate who told me, “I have a trinket in my car I’d like you to have.” He was gone briefly and when he returned, he handed this ‘trinket’ to me.

Not one for needless suspense, he hastily explained that it was a mud scraper off a double disc seeding press drill, ca 1930. There was a pile of them in an old shop on his farm. My face might have given away my confusion, because he continued, “When I saw them, I thought about your book, ‘Come Hell or High Water’.”

‘Come Hell or High Water’, of course, was set in the midst of the decade-long prairie drought.

You see, if it doesn’t rain, there’s no mud. And if there’s no mud, there’s no need for scrapers on your seeding double discs. Apparently they were taken off in the early 1930’s and because of the droughts that followed, were never needed again.

In the ninety years or so since these scrapers were discarded, double disc press drills have pretty much fallen out of favour, replaced by air drills and air seeders. If not for that, well, I guess it’s a pretty safe bet they wouldn’t have been needed in 2021 either.

Thanks to Mark McGeough. I was truly touched and will be honored to put this in my collection of oddities.

Post Script. Jim Berg from Saskatoon knew instantly what this gadget was. His only comment was, “Not sure if it’s off an Oliver or John Deere.” Pretty hard to beat experience.