SD Agricultural Heritage Museum Blog

June 18 is National Fishing Day, so grab your pole, bait and lures and head to the water! Fishing is a fun and relaxing pastime that is enjoyed by people of all ages. Beside being fun is can lead to some terrific meals, too! This photo is of John Vanderwal, Volga, fishing on the Big Sioux River. A railroad bridge is seen in the background.

• Throwback Thursday

An artesian well is simply a well that taps underground water that is under pressure and does not require a pump to bring it to the surface. An aquifer is an underground layer of water bearing porous rock. An artesian aquifer has water trapped between impermeable layers of shale or clay. Being trapped between the layers creates positive pressure. So, when a well is drilled, it releases the pressure and allows the water to come to the surface. If there is a lot of pressure, the water comes out as a fountain or geyser. The James River Valley, stretching from Yankton to Jamestown, North Dakota, is a large artesian well district. This artesian well district was featured in the April 6, 1889, Scientific American magazine.

• What's New Wednesday

To unload grain using a truck lift, the driver puts the front wheels on top of the truck lift. An air-over hydraulic cylinder starts to lift, causing a metal plate to lock the front wheels in position, then continues lifting the front end of the truck. The grain empties into the lower grain pit through the grate in the floor. The grain elevator lifts the grain from the pit to the upper cupola, to spouts to fill the bins. To know how much grain was delivered, the truck is weighed with a full load and weighed again when it is empty.

• Throwback Thursday

May is National Tourism Month. Just as today’s tourist purchase postcard, tee shirts, and refrigerator magnets, the travelers of earlier eras purchased postcards, stereo view cards, and small pieces of souvenir china. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th souvenir chinaware was popular vacation mementos.

• What's New Wednesday

June is National Dairy Month. Celebrate by indulging in your favorite dairy treat. This photograph was taken in 1962 for the June is Dairy Month promotion. Janet Anderson, the 1962 Dairy Princess, is serving cartons of milk to David Fitzgerald and South Dakota State College baseball player Doug Peterson.

• Throwback Thursday

June is National Dairy Month. Time to enjoy your favorite dairy treat! Prior to electricity arriving on farms, the twice daily chore of milking was done by hand. Most milking stools are three legged so that the person milking the cow could lean forward and not fall over, plus 3 legs are more stable on uneven ground than 4 legs. Often farmers would create their own milking stool from found materials such as tractor seats, milk can lids, table legs, porch pillars, tree branches, or planks. With the advent of dairy sanitation regulations farmers were able to earn Grade A rating, thus receiving higher payments for their milk and cream. With the new sanitation rules, wooden milking stools became a thing of the past. Metal milking stools became available and were easier to keep clean. Mechanical milking devices came with electricity and hand milking too became a relic of history.    

• What's New Wednesday

USDA Fertilizer Distribution Machinery Project in Beltsville, MD and Utah State Agricultural College conducted experiments with fertilizer delivery systems.  The museum has a small collection of photographs and correspondence between SDSU Agricultural Experiment Station scientist Lawrence O.

• Throwback Thursday

Weather is always a topic of conversation in South Dakota. While everyone depends upon their favorite weather app to plan their weekend activities, farmers and ranchers need accurate weather forecasts in order carry out their work. This piece of antique weather equipment was once used on the South Dakota State University campus ca. 1931-1950s.

Combination Recorders are one piece of equipment making up a weather station. Data is collected from a wind vane and anemometer mounted on a tower, a rain and snow gauge, and a sunshine duration transmitter. More complex recorders can have a barometer, an air thermograph, a hydrograph, minimum/maximum thermometers, and other piece of equipment attached to them. This recorder records conditions of rainfall and sunshine, plus wind velocity from eight compass points. Electric transmitters collect data from the instruments and record it on a single chart. The cylinder drum on this machine has graph paper wrapped around it and different colored pen tips scribe the information on the graph.

• What's New Wednesday

In March 1956, these young men gathered around a tractor are participating in 4-H Club Week activities held at South Dakota State College. The Tractor Maintenance Class is class being held in the Livestock Pavilion, which is now home to the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum. When you come to the museum you can look up and see the same trusses in the ceiling. This is one photo is a series of Tractor Maintenance Class pictures and they show many different types of tractors being studied.

• Throwback Thursday

Cast iron string cages were a common sight in retail businesses in the late 19th through the mid-20th century. String was used to secure parcels of merchandise. This cage was designed with a loop on the top so that it could hang, and the string is dispensed through a hole in the base. Some cages were designed to sit on the countertop and the string pulled up from a hole in the domed top section. The top and bottom sections easily pulled apart so that a new ball of string could be inserted. 

• What's New Wednesday