Toolsday

Hello readers! I’m Carlie, and I’m the Agricultural Exhibit Designer at the Backus-Page House Museum. Throughout the summer, I'll be sorting through various tools in the barn to get ready for the exhibit! Every Tuesday I’ll be sharing some of what I learned on our blog!

DingDong, DingDong, DingDong

Why are the bells ringing you might ask? Well it's to announce that it is Toolsday, the day where I discuss some of the various tools in our museum ! The tool this week is small, practical and musical ! That's right, we're talking about the bells!

Today, cowbells are shown in Saturday Night Live Skits and in marching bands, however, the settlers used them for more than just entertainment. Bells would often be attached to animals on the farm. 

Why on earth would you want to attach a bell to your animal? I would imagine that the noise could get quite irritating, but there were a lot of practical uses of the bells. First, they could be used to track and locate any cattle that wandered off. Additionally, the noise was very deep, and was theorized to scare off predators.  In some cultures, the size and shape of the bell could even signify whether the animal was male or female. Clearly, there was a lot of significance for the bell used.

If you want to learn more about the tools here at the Backus-Page Museum, or want to come see our collection with your own eyes, then come to out our Civil War Reenactment on July 27th and 28th.  See you then!

Toolsday-Hay Knives

Hello readers! I’m Carlie, and I’m the Agricultural Exhibit Designer at the Backus-Page House Museum. Throughout the summer, I'll be sorting through various tools in the barn to get ready for the exhibit! Every Tuesday I’ll be sharing some of what I learned on our blog!

Hay you! Today we'll be talking about a tool that was essential to the lives of the settlers, the hay knife! 

As I'm sure you can imagine, hay was essential to the lives of the settlers. As farms got larger (and growth of the farm was definitely one of the goals of the settlers), the quantity of hay needed to sustain the livestock increased. Due to spacing issues, farmers often had to keep hay outside in haystacks. Next, the stack would need to be put into a dome shape with a top to prevent the elements from damaging it.  

This was an important task, because a farmer had to assure that there was enough hay to feed all of the livestock throughout the winter. If there wasn't enough, then the farmer would be in a very bad place.

The most well known hay harvesting tool is the scythe, which was most likely created by the Romans. The hay knife, although less well known, was a useful tool for our settlers. It would have been used to cut hay.



If you want to learn more about the tools here at the Backus-Page Museum, or want to come see our collection with your own eyes, then come to out our Civil War Reenactment on July 27th and 28th.  See you then!