THE FARM WAGGON.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10023, 29 April 1898, Page 7

THE FARM WAGGON.

Globs. An old farm waggon has stood among the tumbrils in the thatch-roofed cartsbed for the last fourteen years, for the farmer has never thought it worth his while to order his men to break it up. Just in the same way old ploughs aud barrows are left iv the corners of fields, where they sink slowly into the ground, their woodwork gradually rotting away, until they have almost entirely disappeared amid a rank growth of nettles, burdocks, and thistles. The old waggon would probably fall to pieces if it were dragged out into the farmyard, for it was owing to its rickety condition that it was condemned as unfit for further service after a long harvest fourteen years ago. Now, its wheels are worm-eaten, so tbat some of the nails have fallen out which fastened the iron strokes, and there are gaps in its sides where tlie elm boards have broken away from the oak and ash of the framework. The red and blue paint, once so vivid a hue as to suggest a barbaric taste for brilliant colours, ha* flaked and faded from the wood ; but tlie date, 1832, of the year when it was built, and the name of the farmer who had it made, deeply cut into the jackhoard on the front of the waggon, can still be deciphered when the sun shines into the shed. A litter of worn-out horse-collars, and broken harness lies at the bottom of the waggon, thickly covered with the straw dustof fallen thatch; but theiarmyard fowls still find room to lay eggs in corners indented by the toe-plates "of heavy-shod farm hands, who lons- ago ceased to labour iv the fields. The solid wooden axletrees are fairly sound, for the country wheelwright who made the waggon used good material ; but several of the spokes, loosened long ago by much jolting and jarring along heavy roads and over sun-baked furrows, have been broken away by labourers' boys, and have left square holes in tlie rotting hubs. No one can tell why the old waggon is allowed to remain where it is, for it can hardly have been left there for the convenience of the fowls ; but it is characteristic of country folk to leave dilapidated vehicles and farming implements to the slow dissolution of time and decay. In the year the Reform Bill was passed the waggon was built in an elm-shaded yard where a wheelwright still carries on his rustic trade. This was long before the days of labour-saving mechanical binders and elevators, and when the farm hands were only just learning to use tbe horse-rake at harvest time. Drills bad hardly been dreamed of, all the barley was hand-sown, and corn was threshed with the flail. The farmer of today would find it difficult to get through his year's work if his " dead stock " consisted of such primitive implements as were then in use. The waggons, however, have altered little since then. Iron axles have taken the place of the massive wooden ones, and the wheels are wholly tyred instead of being rimmed with strokes, but the same bright colours are used, though the vivid red which once adorned the harness of the teams is seen now on the waggons only. It is an open question at present whether the newer waggons, with their lighter wheels and axles, will stand the rough road and field work as well as the old-fashioned wains did, for the latter often lasted fifty years and sometimes sixty or seventy. Most of them outlived—if the word may be used of dead stock—many teams, and. some of them several waggoners. They jolted along the quiet country roads' long before the railroads were laid down, carrying corn to the stack3*ard and the mill, hay from the moadows, and hurdles to the sheepfold. When the old waggon that stands in the carfcshed was built, oil-cake was unheard of : but it was often loaded with " cake " bofore it came home from its last journey from the cornfield. Yet, in spite of the many changes and improvements which have taken place in agricultural methods during the last fifty years, the farm waggon is as indispensable a vehicle as it was in the days before railroads were made.