Title- "Halford's first load of wool, Sept. 1926"
Another great photo! I enjoy seeing these photos from your part of the world.
Thank you.
Drive carefully, and enjoy, W2
I would be quite a load for a TT, I would imagine.
What is the thing in the background?
Manuel in Oz
That is the wool press for filling the wool sacks, would be my guess.
More likely a mine head.
Peter
Guys, that is a poppet head, headframe or headgear, depending on where you are from, for what looks like a disused mine .On top would have been mounted 1 or more 'sheave wheels' which rope/s passed over and then down the shaft directly below. Attached to the rope were cage/s which raised and lowered men, ore, materials into and out of the mine. A winch or 'winding engine' did the raising or lowering, in early days they were often water powered, then steam, then around from the 1930's onwards electric driven. It was and is still common to have 2 cages so they work on a counterbalance principle to reduce load on the winding engine, as one cage is at the bottom, the other is at the top, and as it decends, the other comes up etc. Usually headframes were clad in corrigated iron or similar, which was often pinched when mines closed, to leave the gaunt structure you see in the picture. Welcome to my second hobby, mining history ! Regards, bede. Sorry for the text, written on my wee nokia phone !
Depending on the type of wool press and the press operator, those bales could weigh up to 400lbs each.
8 bales = 3200lbs. That's a fair overload.
Today, with power presses, forklift handling, etc we can't make bales that heavy anymore due to OH&S laws! Go figure.
Allan from down under.
The early wool presses in this area were a frame similar to that, the wool sacks were about three feet in diameter, and they would be suspended from the framework, and a small child would be thrown into the sack, the fleeces would then be thrown in and the child would stomp them down until he reached the top. As I recall, it was a chore for two men to hoist the full sacks on a truck.
When I was about 14, I drove a couple of sacks of tags into town, the official asked what type of wool it was, being a dumb kid, I just said it was from lambs (we had tagged a couple of bands of lambs that we were feeding for a sheepman) They sampled the wool, and as the tags were clean, it was logged as lambs wool. Father was very happy when he got the payment, and he figured that I should always take the tags to town.
My dad always picked the fattest kid. That was me. You needed to be pretty good sized to stomp wool in a sack. I probably started doing it when I was 12 or 13. It is hot, dirty, nasty work and the wool is full of sheep ticks as well as other things. The guy who is tying wool throws the fleece in the top when he gets it tied and it comes down right over your head. You wear an old felt hat to hopefully keep the ticks and other loose dirt from going down the back of your neck. Like a lot of things on the ranch it had to be done, like it or not. If you didn't do it somebody else had to.
Shearing in general is hot, nasty work. Bent over for 10-12 hours a day with a sheep in your left hand and clippers in your right. A good shearer can shear 100 a day, some a few more than that. I did my own sheep one year, never again, I decided I was too tall to bend over that far and whatever it cost after that I would find a way to pay somebody else to do it. Hard to find anybody to shear now, they run a couple schools every year but not enough shearers to go around, they bring some in from Peru and Argentina to do the bigger flocks. Electric clippers made a lot of difference, shearing all used to be by hand, it's a real art either way. We had a line shaft set up with a hit and miss engine on it and later an electric motor after we got electricity. Now the clippers are electric hand units. Still lots of work. I don't know if they bag wool now or not.
This is what it looked like at our ranch in 1910. Hot and dusty. You can't see it in the photo but the brand new Milwaukee railroad is in the background.
Probably
What's up with those tents Stan? Loved your history lesson.
They probably were for the shearing crew. They are too big for lambing teepees. This is a pretty amazing photograph for the day. It was taken from the Yellowstone trail, which roughly paralleled the newly built Milwaukee, St Paul and Pacific Railroad.
There is a higher resolution image at www.westmoremontana.info
In the background you can see them butchering an animal down by the cook shack, a couple more buggies, etc. The tall frame looking thing behind the pens that looks like it has a tarp over it is the sacking frame. I can feel a sheep tick crawling down the back of my neck every time I look at this picture.
This set of shearing pens is still there, 100 + years later. Not in very good condition, tho.
If you do look at the home page photo on the web site, the pointy hill in the background of this shot is about half a mile to the left of the edge of this photo.
Thanks for the visual on the tick Stan, my skin is crawling now
Most of the shearers in Idaho still use the clippers with the drive shaft.