To day I went in company with Mother [Mahala* Sharp Hall nee Roberts] to Crockett and while there purchased 1 bull tongue plow & 1 Moore plow & 3 singletree irons. Paid Mother 50¢ heretofore borrowed from S. Daniel and returned home in the evening. Still at work on the old ground plowing. Weather warm & cloudy in the morning but fair & pleasant in the evening.
*This Mahala is a 3rd great-grandma to the Keeper of this family history blog.
- bull tongue plow -- From Farming and Stock Raising by A. M. Haswell . . . This was a narrow, flat somewhat curved blade of steel, sharply pointed and mounted upon a plow stock much like that of a double shovel of later days with one shovel left off. For loosening up the earth among the stumps and roots, or around the standing trunks of a "deadening," nothing could have been better devised than this. One of our modern plows with a broad mold board would not have made one-tenth of the progress in a day, or have done it one-tenth as well, as the bull tongue; for the narrow blade could pass through narrow spaces, around roots and rocks, and stir the virgin soil to a good depth, where the modern plow would have stalled under a tough root or been wrecked upon a hidden rock. . . .
- Moore plow -- not sure what this is . . . found an 1887 Vermont reference to "a foundry, where was manufactured the Moore plow, or Scotch plow, by John and William Moore, about fifty years ago."
- singletree irons -- a singletree is a wooden bar swung at the center from a hitch on a plow, wagon, etc. and hooked at either end to the traces of a horse's harness . . .
