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We begin this column with an apology to anyone whose toes get tromped. With that, we state this premise: Anyone who collects items and displays them in some pleasant manner [...]

Few will argue that the most important of all processes used in producing a harvest is the planting of seed. Seed planted at the proper depth and spaced the proper [...]

The column I wrote for the January 2006 issue of Farm Collector ('What the Dickens is a Go-Devil?') generated more than 30 responses from all over the country. Phone, letter [...]

Not only the infamous 'fence cutters' hated wire. Everyone making, handling, shipping and storing barbed wire dreaded contact with its needle-sharp points. The final purchasers, farmers and ranchers, also hated [...]

Thanks to Susan Oldham of Lefors, Texas, the mystery of the 'X-ray shoe-fitting machine' has now been salved. Many readers recalled shoe-buying expeditions of the past where the customer placed [...]

Early-day California oil field history tells that when drillers reached the approximate depth of an oil or gas formation, they cleared the hole of tools and cables. Next, they lowered [...]

Most old timers have forgotten a simple product used almost daily in the distant past. We called it 'binder twine,' as it was basically used in a McCormick-Deering broadcast binder [...]

An elderly reader recently shared her memories of when, as a little girl, her job was to feed the poultry, then hide in the barn loft, peeping through cracks, watching [...]

In 1837, a village blacksmith named John Deere created a plow from a worn saw blade. Amazingly, the new design resulted in a blade that sheared the soil cleanly and [...]

Thanks to the Farm Collector readers who responded to my query in the November issue about gasoline car heaters, I am now the resident expert on this miraculous device. When [...]

Another long-forgotten chore of the past was remembering to drain the radiators on all the water-cooled engines in your possession. Until alcohol and antifreezes were invented to keep radiator contents [...]

I recently found a photo--taken in 1933 in North Dakota--that triggered memories of grasshoppers and all the problems they brought farmers in Texas. The picture was taken the year I [...]

If you've ever spent a long, hot day on the end of a #10 grain scoop, these memories should trigger a few emotions. After the Dust Bowl, ample rain fell [...]

I must have been nearly grown when Mother began buying butter at the store. Today, each time I peel the paper from a store-bought stick, the image of a beautifully [...]

As sure as death and taxes, every Monday was washday. Like the Ten Commandments, the event was carved in stone and postponed only by funerals or bad weather. Though family [...]

If your toes are crooked, pointing inward or out, you probably spent too many nights at Grandma's house in cold weather sleeping under five layers of heavy quilts--enough weight to [...]

I feel sorry for anyone who never fished a golden-brown 'cracklin' from a lard-rendering pot to sample the most-delicious flavor in the world. If that image leaves many readers clueless, [...]

In this day of seemingly unlimited telephone service via satellite phones and other modern contraptions, it's hard to believe we once used common barbed wire to carry messages. Laura V. [...]

The shock of a livestock fence charger provides the most elementary and unforgettable demonstration of electricity. Even a dullard understands that only a hot wire and a ground wire are [...]

Few people know that lye is one of the oldest chemicals used by humans. Even fewer know that lye is made by trickling water through wood ashes. Repeated circulations of [...]

The feed sack, often called a tow sack or gunny sack, ranks right up there with baling wire and duct tape as one of the things I would most hate [...]

The transition from horses and buggies to automobiles for transportation had its humorous side. Most early-day cars had nicknames, according to Junior Windom, a long-time mechanic and parts man from [...]

If you have ever gone to the post office to pick up cardboard boxes of baby chicks, you have probably eaten a lot of fried chicken in your lifetime. Before [...]

Talk about old times with almost any senior citizen of the Texas Panhandle and you will hear stories about cisterns -- those crude, hand-dug, underground reservoirs that held the precious [...]

Webster's New World Dictionary describes 'stuff' as 'the material or substance out of which anything is or can be made.' I call it good stuff, pretty good stuff and junky [...]

My dad survived the Dust Bowl and Great Depression with three 22-36 International steel lug-wheeled tractors. His first innovative step after those challenging times was taken when Montgomery Ward & [...]

The article offers information on the large ball of twine kept and recycled by farmer Francis A. Johnson, that dated back in 1950s, in McLean, Texas.