Buzz Cut

At the Pioneer Days Fair they had so much interesting stuff, it was kind of hard to pick a favorite.  They had antique tractors on display.

This one was special, a newly restored 1938 John Deere tractor, owned by one of the COE rangers and her husband.  They collect and restore tractors and have over 20 in their collection (so far).  I know Rick would love to have it to cut his grass. :c)

These two gentlemen were making syrup from sugar cane stalks, it took quite a while to boil the syrup out of the sugar cane stalks.

Have you ever seen a real example of an 1800’s era Cotton Gin?  I had not.  The tour guide opened the top to show the brushes.

The brushes pull the seeds from the cotton,

dump the seeds in this bin,

and would then blow the cleaned cotton into this bin through a window in the wall (top right).  Pretty amazing.

Also on display was a huge “Turpentine” Still.

It was used to distill “turpentine” from pine sap to be used as a wood preservative.  It was pointed out that the ATF drilled holes in the tank because it was being used to distill another “product”.  No wonder there were no Sunday sales…

The one machine I found most interesting was this sawmill where they turned these big logs,

into piles of sawdust.

Not really, although it did make a lot of sawdust.  They demonstrated how it cut logs into lumber.

Looking at that blade and the lack of any protection made me wonder how much fun OSHA would have inspecting it.

Here is the Grit Grinder machine.  Somehow, I forgot to put it in yesterday’s post.  Duoh!  The corn goes in the black funnel on top and it puts out the grits in the wooden box on the right.  From there the grits are scooped out by hand and bagged, with each bag being weighed for the proper amount by the lady (sorry that I cut off her head) in the light blue coat.

There was also this funny looking machine on display.  I’m not really sure what it is, but it did look strangely familiar.  An early Apple computer, maybe?

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