Tag Archives: farm

Getting Agricultured

Last night’s adventure was going through a 41 pound lot of The Country Gentleman magazines published between 1915 and 1927.

Here are some of the covers (and one random ad portion) I uncovered while going through this rough but rather large lot.

The Safest Explosive

Magazine ad for Atlas Farm Powder found in a 1916 issue of The Country Gentleman
Magazine ad for Atlas Farm Powder found in a 1916 issue of The Country Gentleman

Farmer go boom.

Bone Shards:

The once-free book will now set you back $50 at Abe Books.

If it’s so safe, why did it say “Dangerous” on the crate?

Did you know that the Nobel prizes were pretty much made possible by dynamite?

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Several governors have now declared square dancing to be an essential service.

Cover of Farm Journal magazine, July 1952
Cover of Farm Journal magazine, July 1952

What happens after MAGA folks are told to practice social distancing.

Cover of Farm Journal magazine, June 1950
Cover of Farm Journal magazine, June 1950

Covergirl

If you know me, you know I had no choice but to find and acquire this magazine. 

Eek
November 1908 Farm Life magazine — was in rough shape but Photoshop helped me de-age it some.
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Just when you thought it was just a turkey in the straw…

One Girl

One girl possesses the mysterious power to control the wheat strawworm, just as the legends foretold.

But what if she doesn’t stop there?

Coming soon to a theater near you from the U.S. Department of Agriculture… Farmers’ Bulletin No. 1323 – The Wheat Strawworm and Its Control

Sometimes the stalks get stalked.

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Soo-wee!

Ain’t no smell like a pig farm, ‘cept maybe a boy raised on a pig farm.

“Your time has expired, leave.”

Ouch.
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The thresher of the period and a mystery for the ages.

I stayed out of the bidding on a few auction items I wanted, but eventually managed to land this sweet Aultman & Taylor thresher advertising poster as my 2nd and last North Star auction win of the day. It has a pretty savage old-timey insult on their competition I liked, calling them “superior to the flail and an improvement on the devices of ancient Egypt.” It wasn’t until I got it home that I saw a label on the back from the Art Conservation Resource Center — Somebody paid to have this poster restored and preserved back in 1988. Interesting. Further digging found a similar but not exact version of this poster selling for $1,300, and another similar poster with an auction estimate range of $3,000-$6,000. A third one sold in 2012 for $950. The ones I found online have a big “The Aultman-Taylor Thresher and Mounted Horse Power for sale by” underneath the illustration, and mine has a tiny “Chas. Shober & Co., Prop’s Chicago Lith’g Co.” down there. No year listed online or anywhere on the print, and I’m not sure if a restored piece is worth more or less or why mine is different from the ones I found online, but this is still all kinds of neat. Hooray for auctions!

(And if any of you have any clue as to the approximate year this was made, please share!)

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