AMISH SCHOOL FUND AUCTION
JULY 20, 2019 MILVERTON, ONTARIO
BIG TIN BOOT WAS BEST OF’BREED’
Just for fun look at these pictures with a sharp eye. Look for what you think is
the best of breed…i.e. what you would want in your living room.
Lighten up!
Now this is just my opinion but if I was asked to choose the best of breed in this
auction I think the big tin cowboy boot would fill the bill. it sold for around $200
to a man of course. I tried to catch up to him to get a picture but he was moving
as fast a Clint Eastwood in a shoot em up movie. Maybe he was embarrassed.
Then I could be wrong. This huge ‘man trap’ must have been used to trap bears long ago
when farmers were clearing the land. These traps are illegal I am told. Bidding was
feverish. I think a Democrat from the US House of Representative was the winning
bidder. He hustled south. No, I have no idea why he wanted the trap. Fun to guess though.
THIRTY YEARS AGO we were buying these dinosaurs of the harvest….thrashing machines. We even had a Lobsinger like this one. Sadly the tarpaulin
we used to cover it from rain, sleet and snow was not up to the job. Water slipped in and the wood rotted. Eventually we hd to set it on fire but there is
an upside to the story as a local farmer borrowed our Lobsinger for one last harvest. That made us feel a little better. Since then we have shrunk our tastes
to fanning mills, turnip pulpier, corn shellers, apple pulpers and cutting boxes.
Hats tell a story. The woman in black is not Amish or Mennonite. The boys clearly are. The hats tell the one from the other.
This is my friend Tom Schell whis is an avid collector of hay carts…the kind that ran on track high up
in most Ontario barns. They were used in the days when horses drew wagons loaded with cured hay
right into the barn threshing floors. Then a massive hay force was dropped like a twin harpoon into
the hay load and by a series of ropes and pulleys and hay cars the loose hay was piled in hay mows.
Tom has done that….
Now Tom was also a collector of fanning mills which, when he downsized his tastes, he delivered the mills
to our farm.
Tom is a contented man. Witness the smile.
the Amish farms are neat and orderly….neat as a pin might be the term although I don’t know the origin
of the term. How can a pin be neat?
These pin up girl posters were a little out of place at the auction….too much leg showing.
We bought this elevated water tough. Single board construction. Tight as a drum.
Of course it could also have been a feed bin.
alan skeoch
July 20, 2019