We had so much rain on Friday that we could not get into the field to work on Saturday, so we loaded up in my trusty 4-Runner and headed up to an antique farm show. We get to a few of these each year, and wish we could get to more! I love to wander around the displays, dreaming about what life must have been like so long ago when this country was still being discovered by settlers and farming was still a family business.

One enterprising fellow came up with a great way to feed his work crew at those busy times when you needed more than just the family to put up a crop. He built this wagon, pulled by horses out to the field where his wife and daughter managed the cooking on a wood fired stove in the back right corner.

When it was noon and dinner was ready, the crew filed in to sit facing either direction on the built in benches and were served the meal. The screens running the length on both sides let air circulate but kept the flies out. Ingenious! I bet that crew felt like they had the Hilton in their field.

Then I saw this mail “truck” pulled by one horse and decided I could have been very happy toodling along delivering the mail with my trusty horse to pull me through rain, sleet, snow, wind and dark of night! Can you even imagine? Maybe you’d stop at noon along a crick bank somewhere, let the horse graze a bit while you ate your lunch packed in a pail, perhaps nap a minute or two and then be on your way. The joy you’d bring folks as you left off a letter from Great Aunt Martha, or that package with the new shoes you’d ordered from the Sears catalogue.

One of my favorites is this antique cutter. It would have been pulled by one horse too. I imagine Almanzo Wilder driving it through blizzards to pick up Laura Ingalls from her school and bring her to her home for the weekend while he was courting her. They’d be tucked in together and covered with a heavy wool blanket to keep out the cold and snow. I often think there was mistake in the century I was born in and that I should have been born into this earlier time.