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Show Yankee Blacksmith Won Fame as the 'Father of the Steel Plow' Although it may be true, as the 1 author of "Plowmans Folly" declares, de-clares, that today "the moldboard plow is the villain of the world's agricultural drama," it was not so true a century ago when the pioneers pio-neers of the Middle West found in its broad expanse of open prairie a sod, tough with the toughness of thousands of interlaced roots of the tall rank-growing grass, that was very different from the loose gravelly gravel-ly soil they had known back East. It was rich soil there as no doubt about that but there was no drainage drain-age and the heavy loam clung to the iron-shod moldboard of the plow. So the pioneer plowman always had to carry a wooden paddle with him. Then, when his straining oxen couldn't pull forward another step, he'd have to jerk the plow out of the ground and clean it off with his paddle. But it was only a few minutes min-utes until the sticky muck had rolled up on the plowshare like balled snow on a man's bootheel and the cleaning clean-ing process would have to be repeated repeat-ed all over again. Under such conditions it looked as though these prairie lands, rich as they were, could never be farmed satisfactorily. Then, in 1837, a Yankee blacksmith changed all that. He gave them a plow that would "scour" itself. His name was John Deere and he was the "Father of the Steel Plow." the man that conquered con-quered the prairie sod. |
