 |
| 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment