Horse-drawn lister still plowing

jinman · Aug 4, 2011

I inherited a Dearborn Cultivator toolbar with several shanks, feet, and sweeps when my Dad passed away. One of the things he had for it was an old lister plow converted to fit on the toolbar. TBN member GreenElephant PM'd me to ask about the lister. I cannot post a photo attachment to a PM, so I'm doing it here along with my descriptive text to him. If anyone else has any questions, I'll try to answer them too.

Basically, my lister and the shank are taken from an old two-wheel horse drawn lister plow. They cut off the clevis on the front and welded two sections of 3/8" angle on each side of the shank. Then, they drilled holes in the angle to match the holes in the Dearborn cultivator tool bar. That way, the lister just bolts up to the toolbar like any other shank except it uses four bolts instead of three like the standard shank. I like to use grade 5 or 8 bolts on the lister. Also, my Dearborn cultivator's frame was broken by my Dad sometime when I was a kid and he had it rewelded. My guess is the lister plow was on the toolbar and he hit big rock. . . not sure.

This link is to a lister plow like the one I think my lister came off of.

Western · Aug 4, 2011

That would be neat to have. Do you still use it in the garden?

Here is a neat one too, and it was HUGE!!

The Making of the Historic Bull Ditch

dave1949 · Aug 4, 2011

Western said:
That would be neat to have. Do you still use it in the garden?

Here is a neat one too, and it was HUGE!!

The Making of the Historic Bull Ditch

Nice bit of history shared there. Thanks for posting that.

Dave.

jinman · Aug 5, 2011

That's a great story Dennis.:thumbsup: I've use my lister to build many "cow" ditches (or maybe hiefer ditches

)around my place. My gullies could already be called "bull" ditches. The bull ditcher and the crab are two interesting pieces of Americana. It's amazing what was done with bovine and equine power back in the day.

hawkeye08 · Aug 5, 2011

That is a middle buster on steroids!

Western · Aug 5, 2011

:laughing: You guys got that right! Took allot of feed to move that big dude. It is amazing the tenacity Americans had back "in the day". Now days, they'd have a million dollars worth of equipment out there to dig that thing.

We used to be quite resourceful.

dave1949 · Aug 5, 2011

Western said:
:laughing: You guys got that right! Took allot of feed to move that big dude. It is amazing the tenacity Americans had back "in the day". Now days, they'd have a million dollars worth of equipment out there to dig that thing.

We used to be quite resourceful.

Probably closer to $4M but they would be done sooner, maybe :laughing:

I know what you mean about resourceful, but the ability to put multi-millions worth of equipment to work about anywhere in the country is nothing to sneeze at either. It's just a different type of resourcefulness.

So, how many cow patties would 48 bulls make per day?

Dave.