Collection of creepy looking farm equipment.

Our pal Iowahawk took a bunch of photos of his father's collection of scary-looking old farming implements. (Above: "Pity the poor apple skinned alive by the fiendish cast iron Kleen Kutter.")

After 42 years farming a handsome little square mile of western Iowa, my old man hung up his clodhoppers a few years ago for a well-deserved rest. Like a lot of retirees, Hawkdad decided to take up collecting, with a focus on primative farm equipment and toys. Since then he has amassed an impressive collection of unique agricultural objects; unusual hand tools, planter lids and tractor seats, turn-of-the-century advertising signage, antique toy tractors and horses. It's all interesting, but some of it is "interesting" in the same way an H.R. Giger painting is interesting: cool, mechanical, but indescribably creepy. Hooterville steampunk meets the Tower of London. Rather than try to describe it, here are some pictures I took during a recent visit.

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Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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NickP

I’d guess the “couple of devices you don’t even want to know about” are bloodless castraters. Ewww.
Anonymous

but not as hr giger creepy as the tools from the movie ‘dead ringers’
http://arteyliteratura.blogia.com/upload/20060122150056-dead-ringers1.jpg

linuggz
Anonymous

In Hadley, MA there is (or used to be, haven’t been back in a while) a free farm museum that has loads of these creepy devices. I once played with an apple peeler just like the one in the picture.
Anonymous

The item in the picture is for skinning fruit. We’ve stopped in the last couple years, but my parents would take us apple picking at an orchard. We’d get home and use exactly the same device to skin apples for making pie. Stick an apple on the 3 pronged horizontal holder and turn the crank. The apple spins around while the blade moves side to side. As long as you have a sharp blade, it does a pretty good job and leaves tasty apple skins to nibble on while cooking.
Anonymous

my neighbor collects them… apple peelers. he has 85 different models, some worth $300 or more. they’re on e-bay. go figure.
Anonymous

What, no Burdizzo Emasculator*?

*An actual gadget referenced in “Raising Sheep the Modern Way.” Ouch.
Parq

Where’s Gary Larsen’s “Cow Tools” when we need it?