The Big Fall Sale

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the big Fall Sale at Dinky's was coming up.  Well, it's here and I took in some of it yesterday and today.  It has been raining buckets, but as dry as it's been during the past summer, no one is complaining a bit.  We've gotten three or four inches in the last 36 hours, I'd guess, but it's not keeping folks away from the sale.

Not everything went as high as this skillet.  It reportedly sold for $1350.00 !!

A #13 Griswold skillet reportedly sold for a whopping $1350.00 !!  In a nutshell, the Griswold company made many different sizes of skillets.  The #13, being it used the unlucky number 13, was the most UN-popular.  As a result, few are around today and are eagerly sought by collectors.

The inside stuff sold yesterday, and the sale moved outside to the tools and implements today.  Carts, buggies, and wagons were being sold inside.  In all, there were five outside rings, one in the main building, and a harness sale going on in the north barn...all at the same time.  Here is a link to an account of the sale in the local newspaper:  Washington Times Herald

There were many crocks, churns, and jugs to bid on.

To the left of the stoneware in this photo is a second auction ring.  Some buyers were watching both and bidding on two items at the same time!

Here is a nice assortment of lamps.

The 'latest' in wringer washing machines!  All will go at the auction.

A nice bunch of grinding stones.

Some  'water purifiers' sold as well.

I'd never seen one of these...an ice plow or ice saw.  It is pulled behind a horse on an ice-covered lake.  It scores the ice and helps to make it easier to cut.

An nice old sharpener.

Here is a nice old corn sheller, ready to use.

Lard presses.

There were a couple of these nest boxes.  The perches fold down in front of each row of nest openings.

An old cider mill.

A newer version of cider mill.

A variety of butchering kettles.

If you look closely, there are three separate auctions going here.  Each truck has an auctioneer doing his job.

A variety of horse drawn farm implements.

Got a big dog or very active child that you need to put to work?  You can hook this treadmill to a lot of different machines!

More horse drawn implements.

A big old thresher.

I liked this forge and the big swaging block.

Tonight will be the big auction of Standardbred driving horses, and the horse pull will be moved inside due to the torrential rains we've had yesterday and today.  Tomorrow will be more driving horses, then Friday will be the draft horse sale.  Big doings for the area. 

Sippin' Cider

This evening, I went over to a friend's house and helped to make some fresh apple cider.  We began by cutting up the hundreds of pounds of fresh apples.  (All the while, we were looking for the occasional worm.)  The old cider press itself is nearly 150 years old, and was made by a company called Ferrell, Ludlow, & Rodgers between about 1865 and 1872, according to my searching.  It still does a great job!  The photos below depict the press and some of the process.  My friends do not like having their photos taken, so I have not included them here.

After cutting up the apples, they were dumped into the wooden hopper atop the grinder.  There, a gasoline motor provided the power to grind the apples for pressing.  While one batch (seen in the oaken cylinder on the left in the photo below) was being pressed, the other was being filled with ground apples.

When one cylinder is pressed, it is slid out for emptying, and the cylinder full of ground fruit is slid into place under the press.  The heavy turnscrew has four lugs that a stout pole is laid into to provide leverage for manually turning and pressing the juice from the fruit.

In the photo below, you can see the ground up apples in the oaken cylinder.  As soon as all the juice is pressed from the apples in the cylinder beneath the turnscrew, the left over material, or 'pummies' were emptied into a wheel barrow, then wheeled over and dumped into the goat pen.

 
Below, you can see fresh 'squoze' apple cider running into the collecting pan.  From there, it was poured through a jelly bag, then into waiting jugs.  In all, we made around twenty-five gallons of sweet, unpasteurized, raw cider.  The bulk of it was taken to be frozen for later use.  My friends have some storage space in a small freezer facility that they use for a lot of their deep freeze needs since they don't have electricity in their homes.

I came away with a half gallon of cider and had a really good time working and visiting with friends.  It was a good evening.