By the time that Ridgeway was founded, horse-drawn machinery for harvesting hay had been in use for some years, replacing the much harder method of hand cutting the hay with a scythe. Of course, the local shop keepers had all the equipment they needed to get the job done.
To cut hay, a farmer might use a horse-pulled sickle mower. Two dealers advertised in the Ridgeway Journal in 1891 that they had these mowers for sale, T. H. Taylor, who also sold buggies, wagons, carts, harness, binders and twine and would do repairs as well. My favorite ad was from Peasley & Mirgon, as they detailed the features of their mower in a poem: “We have a Mower to sell, of course, That beats all the others on the force. It has a spring beneath the bar, that makes it run without a jar; It cuts so clean and runs so light That it needs no work to keep it right…” (Ridgeway Journal, Jul 3, 1891).
A farmer in 1891 probably raked the hay with a dump rake, which looks like the horses are pulling a large comb with curved teeth. The operator had to stop every so often and dump the hay out of the rake before continuing. Later in the 1890s, a farmer could buy a side delivery rake which would pick up the hay and leave it to the side of the row.
I didn’t find balers being advertised anywhere in Harrison County in the 1890s but did find one mention of a hay baler that was destroyed in a fire in 1893. The next item about a baler was an farm auction ad in 1902 offering a half-interest in a hay baler.
If you really want to go down a rabbit hole of interesting videos, do a search in YouTube for “horse drawn hay harvesting” or “horse drawn farming”. If you want to correct any of my information or if you have any stories of farming in Ridgeway that you would like to share, please let me know or stop by the computer repair shop one afternoon.
