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30. Borrowed Hay Mower—Summer 1874
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177 Summer 1874 Each spring Silas, who had now lived eight years in the Link Lake community, wandered his freshly worked fields in the evening after supper with his head down. Occasionally he would kick at a clod of dirt, sending up a little puff of dust. Or he would reach down and pick up a little stone and then toss it aside. When Silas learned of the invention of barbed wire, he began buying it by the roll and stringing it around his fields, even though wooden-rail fences already surrounded the fields. Rather than replace the rails that he had painstakingly installed, a few every year since he homesteaded the place, he built the new barbed-wire fence a few feet away from the old fence, with all new posts. Whenever Silas wasn’t attending to his crops or walking his fields, he was digging postholes, setting posts, and stringing barbed wire. Sophia had learned by now not to ask Silas why he seemed so obsessed with building fences or why he rather aimlessly walked his fields hour upon hour, until darkness forced him inside. Neighbors observing this rather unusual behavior continued to ask Sophia 30 Borrowed Hay Mower about it. She answered that she did not know. That she could not understand it either. Those who passed by the Starkweather farm marveled at the strange arrangement of fields and fences. Looking straight back from the country road that trailed by the farm, one could make out three rows of five-acre fields, with a pair of travel lanes separating them, stretching back a half-mile to the end of the farm. Twelve little fields totaled sixty acres of crops. Most farmers divided their fields into ten- or twenty-acre plots, with twenty acres being the most common . But not Silas Starkweather. The farm totaled 160 acres. The hundred acres not cultivated were wooded, steep, and stony. In the midst of the big woods, which consisted of white pine, burr oak, black oak, and black locust, one found a five-acre pond. Near the pond, in addition to some giant oaks, cottonwood and willow trees grew, with a side hill of maple and another side hill of aspen that turned a brilliant yellow in fall. Increase Joseph preached what he called “crop rotation.” This meant not planting the same crop on the same piece of ground year after year. Most farmers planted their fields to wheat every year, since the first year they broke the soil. Sophia had shared the idea of crop rotation with Silas, and although he did not say he agreed with the preacher, he began practicing this new approach to farming. Many farmers slowly began adding milk cows to their livestock inventory, a few more every year. By 1874, Blue Shadows Farm had twelve cows housed in a log stable that Wolfgang and his sons helped Silas build. As his cowherd grew in number, Silas found it nearly impossible to cut enough hay with a scythe to provide the quantity of feed needed for the cattle to survive the long Wisconsin winters. His father-in-law offered Silas the use of his new mower, a machine pulled by horses that cut a five-foot swath of hay while the farmer rode on a seat and did nothing more than hold the reins and 178 Borrowed Hay Mower—Summer 1874 [35.173.215.152] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:24 GMT) 179 Borrowed Hay Mower—Summer 1874 guide the team. The team of young Percherons that Silas had recently purchased was spirited and some times a bit difficult to control . Not at all like Dan and David, his trusted but slow, plodding oxen that now spent most of their days grazing with the cows in a pasture. The difference between oxen and horses, aside from their temperaments, was speed. The Percherons, Bill and Pete, moved twice as quickly, no matter if they were pulling a plow or hauling a wagonload of corn and oats to the mill in Link Lake for grinding. On this beautiful June morning, with robins and meadowlarks singing, and a red-tailed hawk soaring high overhead in a cloudless sky, Silas guided Wolfgang’s new hay mower, pulled by his horses, around and around the five-acre hayfield. Spring rains had come regularly so the hay crop of clover and timothy stood tall and lush. Silas dozed as the hot sun warmed his back and the sweet smell...