Posted 6 years ago
mooshyk
(1 item)
Does anyone know what type of wire this is? Found it in old barn. Knots in wire every 3 feet or so.
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It's planter wire for wire check planting corn. Before chemicals were available to kill weeds in crops one method of weed control was to cultivate the corn. A cultivator has shanks on the machine to dig into the ground like a hoe to uproot the weeds. Early ones were horse drawn and later ones were tractor mounted. Some are still used today. The wire you have was stretched all the way across the field and staked to the ground at each end. The planter was equipped with a mechanism that would trip a gate in the seed boot to drop the seed in hills. If the row width was 40 inches then you needed wire with a knob every 40 inches. When the corn emerged having the hills spaced 40 inches apart allowed the crop to be "cross cultivated". Cultivating the crop on 2 perpendicular directions would remove many more of the weeds than you would get by cultivating in only one direction. Cultivating was usually done 3 times each year. When the farmer finished a pass across the field a trip mechanism on the planter released the wire so he could turn. The farmer then had to get off the tractor and relocate the stake behind the planter and push it into the ground again. That was repeated at both ends of the field on every turn. It took a lot longer to plant because of the time it took to string the wire, get off at each end to move the stakes and roll the wire up when done planting the field. There is a mechanism on the planter to roll the wire back on the spool. As a member of an antique farming club near my hometown I have demonstrated wire check planting corn and cross cultivating a few time. You can search "wire check planting corn" on You-tube to see it done. Searching "planter stakes" will get you a picture of those. There are many different designs of stakes.
I would call that an educational reply. I am older than dirt and grew up in rural farm country and never happened to see this system in use. Sounds more time consuming than it is worth.
Patented by Joseph C. Barlow of Quincy, IL Oct 20, 1885 Patent # 328,452