His collection includes early wooden moldboard plows, hillside plows, root cutters, a bluegrass plow, an
ice plow and an early steel ditch puller.
and Farm Collector columnist Sam Moore correctly identified the piece as a horse-drawn
ice plow (or marker), used to score ice in ice harvesting on lakes and rivers.
Here, a group of men work with tongs, saws and an
ice plow.
Even so, Ed's 1923 Gifford-Wood field saw was a far cry from the industry's early days, when hand-powered saws and horse-drawn
ice plows were commonly used.
Then came the
ice plows, each drawn by a single horse, and featuring a long, heavy beam set with eight separate blades (or shares), each notched at the bottom.
Ice plows followed the markers, deepening the grooves until they were about two-thirds of the way through the ice.