MUSEUM OF ARGRICULTURE…LUBBOCK

Tuesday, May 10 – We went down to see the new location for the Buddy Holly Statue and Walk of Fame. The dedication was on Monday, May 10. It's new location is across the street from the Buddy Holly Museum. It's a great location, in a nice new park, in the entertainment district downtown.

Do you know some of these Hall of Famers.

Thursday, May 12 – We headed to our last museum today.....The American Museum of Agriculture, which is right next door to the American Wind Museum. As a matter of fact, they are in the old building used by the Wind Museum before they moved to their new facility.

In 1969, as agricultural museum was deemed important to the people of West Texas. Too many people thought of the old machinery left in the back yard as junk.

We met Vic, a tour guide. He was wonderful. He gave us a delightful tour of the entire building adding special stories about many of the items in the Museum.

The Agriculture Museum displays machinery and artifacts dating back to the pioneering years of agriculture. The building is stuffed with old tractors, hand tools, farm equipment, and machinery. Not only the building, but the parking lot and yard are full of tractors, combines, plows, planters, grinders, and antique farm equipment. They definitely need the new building that is being built on the neighboring hillside. They plan to move into the phase 1, of a three phase construction project, before year's end.

What is this? A citrus tractor. The fenders protected the low limbs in a citrus field from being broken off. Never saw anything like this.

Marsha's dad can relate to this one.1939  One-row horse-drawn grain drill

 

Minneapolis Moline, 1955, Model UB Special, Row Crop Tractor

Fordson, 1922 Wheatland Tractor. The Ford Motor company began to experiment with agricultural tractors before WWI. In 1915, the company introduced the Fordson. It was extremely successful in becoming the first tractor many farmers owned

Case, 1934, Model L with factory option cab Wheatland tractor. Wheatlands (or standards) sit lower (don't need crop clearance), usually have big fenders and dust shields. List price of the tractor $1,350. The enclosed winter cab was a factory option which added $110 to the cost.

Vic explained how they used this device to weigh the cotton when it was brought in from the field.

The cotton was then placed in 500 lb. bundles. Cotton today is going for about $1.50/lb.

The Museum contains tons of the displayed everywhere.

Don't forget the 1,000s of tools on walls, tables and benches.

Our neighbor use to plow and plant his garden with a tractor like this one.

A unique part of the museum includes 71 pedal tractors and over 300 toy tractors.

These are the tractors every little boy in America had or wished he had.

This collection was donated by a local collector to the museum. All the tractors have been restored to perfect condition and may of the toys are new and some still in their boxes. This room alone, makes the visit worthwhile.

We spent several hours looking over the tractors and farm equipment. What a wonderful idea to preserve this part of America's past.

Entry is free but donations are gratefully accepted.

As we headed to our car, we were delighted to meet an elderly gentleman spraying weeds in the parking lot. His name is Alton Brazel. He's in his eighties and still shows up everyday to work around the museum for a few hours. What a guy!

Alton took it upon himself to begin this collection of agricultural equipment and machinery that told the story of American agriculture. He knows just about anything one can ask about the antique farm equipment. We asked him about a particular piece, we founding interesting, and he knew it was a cultivator made in the mid-western part of the country.

Look at all these levels and handles of this cultivator. What a hoot!

Marsha couldn't wait to climb up on the "big, bad boy"…her words not mine.

 

We will leave you with a little quiz. Do you know what this antique was used for?

How about this one?

No? Well here are the answers. The first picture is a cream separator. It was a gravity-based unit. Once the cream separated, the farmer would open the value at the bottom and drain the milk. There is a little window along the side and bottom to help him tell when he reached the cream.

The second picture is a butter press. Vic said they had one exactly like this on his farm. Did you get them both right?

Be sure to add the Agriculture Museum to your list of "Places to see in Lubbock." Hopefully, you will be lucky enough to have Vic there the day you visit. He made our visit so worthwhile!

If you would like to see more pictures of the Museum, please click here.

 

Saw this on the way home…

Check out the bumper sticker.............”Way to go GUYS.......Jeesh! What is this world coming to?

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see ya'll back real soon. Have a great day!

STEPPING BACK IN TIME

Sunday, May 8 – It is going to get a little breezy the next three days according to the weather forecast. “A LITTLE BREEZY”......that's Texan for windy as hell ! ! ! Temperatures are going to be approaching the 100 degree mark too. Looks like a “pleasant” several days.

Marsha had a great Mother's Day. The girls called and talked for quite a while. That is all she wanted to make the day complete.

Monday, May 9 – We visited the National Ranching Heritage Center today, on the campus of Texas Tech, where the story of ranching in North America is told through the preservation of 48 authentic structures displayed on the 16-acre site.





All structures date from the late 1700's through the 1950's and are authentically restored and furnished. The buildings include a bunkhouse, barns, dugout cabins, a ranch headquarters, windmills, a blacksmith's shop, and much more.

El Capote Cabin, 1838. This cabin is constructed of winged elm logs chinked with mud. The roofing is hand-split pecan shakes; the floor is compacted earth.





Hedwig's Hill Dogtrot house, 1855-56. These are two log cabins under a common roof separated by a breezeway called a dogtrot. This style of architecture is characteristic of frontier houses throughout the Southern states. The low porch keep the home cool.







Matador Half-Dugout, 1888. Most first homes of ranchers and settlers on the plains were half-dugouts. They were cut into embankments with the door facing southeast to catch cool breezes in summer.





Long S Whiteface Camp, 1901, 1905. This type of house is named after the white-faced Hereford cattle. The two-story dugout began as a water well. The box and strip upper story was added in 1905.





Blankenship Cowchip, 1907. Now here is something you don't see everyday. This structure stored dried cow manure called cowchips. It was the job of the children to collect the material and store it so it stayed dry. The material was burned for heat and cooking.



JA Milk and Meat House, 1880. The front was for meat storage.



In the stone-walled milk room, water trough kept the perishables from spoiling.



Barton House, 1909. The House was built as a Queen Anne-style home. This house had five rooms and a bath on each floor. Amenities such as running water, sliding doors and wallpaper were added for the first time.







U Lazy S Carriage House, 1906. Only the most prosperous families had a carriage house.



Low, rectangular cuts in the wood allowed for cats to come and go. They controlled the rodent population.



Baldwin Locomotive, 1923.



Irons of Fire. There were hundreds of branding irons on display.



Marsha liked this one the best. It was the year she graduated from high school.



Picktet and Sotol House, 1904. The home was made from yucca-like sotol plant. The roof was thatched with bundles of sacahuista grass. This was Marsha's favorite house. She wouldn't want to live it; she just liked the idea of using the yucca plant for housing.





The Center is currently undergoing construction of an addition, that when completed will house exhibits galleries and historical artifacts.

It takes about an hour and a half to stroll down the paths to visit each building and to read the description plaques (both in English and Spanish) that describe each historical building. This FREE tour is another addition to our “must see” of things to do in NW Texas.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see ya'll back real soon. Have a great day!