Agricultural Hand Tools

Agricultural Hand Tools by Roy Brigden. Soft back, 32 pages, illustrated B&W,15cm x 21cm.

This book is full of pictures of tools and items including a short history of what each of them was used for. Useful for identifying those obscure metal finds in the field.

On the back cover:

Hand tools are scarcely used at all in modern agriculture as mechanical handling techniques continue to spread and grow in sophistication. A whole range of tools, once all too familiar to the farmworker, gradually became obsolete during the twentieth century. Some were of comparatively recent origin while others could be traced back to classical times and even to the very beginnings of farming. Although they are no longer used, farm tools have not been forgotten for interest has steadily grown since the Second World War. Many rural museums are now flourishing throughout Britain and the implements are highly prized by a growing number of private collectors. This Album describes these tools and the farming processes they performed in the period before the general dominance of the tractor and combine harvester. Roy Brigden is Keeper of the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading.

Contents:

• Field maintenance and preperation;
• Seeding and weeding;
• Harvesting;
• Processing the crop;
• Further reading;
• Places to visit.