O'Hara Mill Homestead and Conservation Area

06/07/2026

Post by Dave Little In the background of this old O’Hara farm photo (with James O’Hara Jr. and his brother-in-law Ben Lear) is a wooden bucket tied to a long rope, and a tall post with a difficult-to-see pivoting pole at the top of it, near their shallow dug well.
It was their ‘well sweep’…..an ingenious devise to make it easier to lift a full bucket of water from the well.
A long horizontal pole (known as the sweep) pivoted on a ‘U’ at the top of a vertical post…..one end of the sweep weighted with stone…..the rope and bucket fastened to the other longer end.
Correctly balanced, the stone weight equals the weight of a half filled bucket of water. Because the stone weight was heavier than an empty bucket, it took some downward pull on the rope to lower the bucket into the water. But when the rope was released, allowing the weight to drop, it helped to lift the full bucket of water…..a great help for wives and older children, often the ‘drawers of water’ on early farms.
This well and sweep no longer exists at the O’Hara Mill farmstead.

06/01/2026

From Dave Little
We don’t see a lot of moldboard plows on farms these days…..but back in the 1800s, it was the most important tillage implement.
We’ve had some great single furrow horse-drawn plowing demonstrations at past O’Hara Mill Heritage Days and Draft Horse Days.
From 1800 to 1850, throughout Ontario, many small blacksmith-style operations were making single furrow walking plows…..wooden moldboards with protective iron strips, primitive cast iron shares (front cutting blades)-see photo.
John Deere developed the first self-cleaning plow, covering the cast iron share and moldboard with a piece of steel from a large sawmill saw blade (shown)…..designed for dense, sticky American midwest soils. Lighter Ontario soils did’nt stick to the plow in the same way, but by the late 1800s, developing Eastern Ontario companies were manufacturing polished steel non-sticking walking plows.
Cockshutt introduced the first polished steel single furrow sulky plow in the late 1880s (shown).
The single plow era ended in 1920s-1930s as agriculture shifted from draft horses to gasoline tractors and 2 furrow plows.

05/29/2026

05/24/2026

A new season is upon us at the Homestead.
Have you ever considered VOLUNTEERING with us? How can you help? Well, there is something for everybody. Trails, gardens, sharing your skills or learning new ones, maintenance, children's activities, antiques of all kinds - the list goes on. If you are interested, drop us a message or contact:
https://www.oharamill.ca/volunteer

05/24/2026

Corn Planting Time.... Here is another great post from Dave Little.
I was given this primitive hand-held corn seed planter to fix up and add to the 2 already at O’Hara Mill (shown).
Many companies made similar planters between 1850 and 1900 (see display of 41 makes)…..finally ending the back-breaking job of bending over to plant by hand.
When the 2 closed bottom metal teeth were jabbed into the tilled soil, then pushed apart, a spring-loaded slide released kernels from the seedbox, dropping them into the ground between the separated teeth.
Drawing on the experience of indigenous neighbours, early farmers planted 4 kernels in a ‘hill’ with these planters……hence this old verse…..
“one for the blackbird, one for the crow
one for the cutworm, and one to grow”
Before planting, a horse-drawn row marker sled, with 2 or more runners 40 inches apart, marked the entire field……and repeated at right angles to the marked rows. A hill of kernels was planted at each intersection of this marker row grid…..allowing a horse and cultivator between the rows in both right angle directions.

05/19/2026

05/18/2026

Our grounds and trails are open daily from sunrise to sunset. Tours available from Canada Day til Labour Day.

05/17/2026

Random images of O'Hara Mill Homestead and Conservation Area

05/17/2026

Ever wonder about silage? Dave Little is here to tell us all about it.
Mastering the production of corn silage in the late 1800s was a huge step forward in providing enough roughage (with dry hay) to feed the increasing number of cattle on farms…..and it happened when horses were still the only source of power.
To store the fermented silage, wooden upright silos were appearing on farms. No sign of a silo around the O’Hara farm outbuildings (photo). But one was being built on a nearby Jarvis Lake Road farm (photo)
Major farm machinery companies were manufacturing horse-drawn corn binders that cut and bound cornstalks into sheaves, some with a ‘power carrier’ that lifted the sheaves onto a horse-drawn wagon moving alongside the binder.
Corn cutters (also called cutting boxes) were also being made to chop the cornstalks at the silo, with an attached elevator to lift the ‘green fodder’ to the top of the silo.
This amazing old photo, from Eastern Ontario’s Glengarry County, shows a team of horses on a treadmill operating a cutting box and elevator at a silo-filling bee.

05/13/2026

Dave Little's topic today is Milking Machines ...
A retired Tweed dairy farmer gave me this rare hand-pumped milking machine…..missing parts salvaged from my families’ farm artifact collections…..to restore for O’Hara Mill.
It was manufactured by the Macartney company of Brockville (1923-1925)…..
operated on the principle of the vacuum pump applying constant suction to the cows’ teats. The Mehring company of Maryland had been making a foot-operated milking machine since 1892 using the same constant suction approach (shown).
With a full udder, a cow would release her milk with suction. But milking a cow by hand, the alternate squeezing of the teat is quicker, more thorough.
Realizing that, American companies DeLaval (in 1917) and Surge (in 1922) were already developing primitive pulsating vacuum systems…..using rubber liners in the teat cups…..a ‘squeeze and release’ motion…..like a sucking calf.
Unfortunately, the Macartney company was already behind in milking machine development when it started…..lasting only 2 years.