Saturday 12 July 2014

Farming Fridays

Jamieson Stoning Machine
     You can’t miss this extravagant piece of farm equipment as you are meandering through the museum grounds. Being one of our biggest artifacts here at the museum, it is also one of our more remarkable pieces in our agriculture collection because of the outstanding convenience it provided for many early farmers. In order for the land to be practical for growing crops, they had to clear the big stones out of the land space where they would like to plant. This big horse powered machine did the job just fine. The stoning machine was invented by an early settler of Brodie, William Jamieson, with the intent to help farmers with this labour intensive task of moving large boulders from their fields. After it was built, it had to be driven all the way to Kingston to acquire a patent for it.

     Although the mechanics of the machine look fairly complicated and complex, it was not hard to run. Young boys would work ahead of the machine and used a maul and chisel to make holes in the stones so the metal hooks could fit into the holes and lift the boulder with relative ease. Being a very useful machine to farmers, and only needing a horse or two to lift the stones by pulleys and ropes, it became a very popular tool and was still used well into this century. You could rent it for $1.50 a day and often farmers would make stone fences from all the boulders and many of the fences around Glengarry still have stones with these holes on their sides. 

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