Did you know that oxen have to be shoe'd just like horses? How would you like to be the ferrier that gets to shoe that ox? Well, those guys are smarter than you think; they built a chute to hold that critter up and still:
When I study it closely it reminds me of a guillotine. A pulley system lifts the top panel, the ox puts his head through, and the panel is lowered. My cousin in Chillicothe used to use a similar contraption to hold his cows for innoculations and spraying their eyes with "purple stuff" to prevent pink eye. The only difference is that an ox wouldn't lift his foot to receive the shoe and this jobber-do came equipped with a sling that would pass under the ox and then be ratcheted up to literally lift the ox off the ground so that the ferrier could get those shoes on. (Cows don't need shoeing because all they are ever expected to do is walk around eating. My father-in-law always wondered how black cows could eat green grass and give white milk...)
This is a "dray" wagon - think 18-wheeler flat bed's of today. This would certainly load easier than today's 18-wheelers: look at that itty-bitty ground clearance! You'd think back then they'd need MORE clearance! Maybe big stuff gets cross-country in a train car and across town on a dray...
And then there's the sleigh. (They used to heat bricks, rocks, or put pans of hot coals in the footboards of the sleigh to keep feet warm and toasty.) This was definitely for people transport. Not a lot of wagon work done in the winter time. Winter time was used for repairing harnesses and equipment in order to be ready for spring planting.
It was time to be carding and spinning and weaving all that wool sheared from the sheep, too. The kids had time out from a lot of their chores to catch up on school work they couldn't get to because the crops had to be planted or tended or harvested.
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