Continuing with more items about farming around Ridgeway, I found two interesting articles in the Weekly Kansas City Star from the 1940s. During WWII, farm hands were in short supply as many of the young men were in service, so farmers had to get inventive to get the work done. Harold Adkins, who raised purebred Hampshire sheep, devised a portable folding blocking stand that could be loaded into the trunk of a passenger car for transport. (A blocking stand is used to hold a sheep in place for shearing, grooming or health care.) He said it worked better than having a helper hold the sheep. (The Weekly Kansas City Star, Sept. 27, 1944)
Wesley Harrison, another Ridgeway area farmer, decided that he had to stop too often during planting soybeans particularly to refill the planter boxes with seed. He devised an upgrade by raising the sides of the planter boxes to be double in height but kept the bottom measurements the same. By doing this, he was able to double the volume of both boxes to hold one third of a bushel each. That allowed him to plant six acres of corn before stopping to refill. He used an old car engine block at the back of the planter to balance the extra weight. (The Weekly Kansas City Star, Sep 01, 1943)
