What comes to mind when you hear the word “tractor”?

Fig. 1. Dog “Driving” a Fordson Tractor, circa 1919. THF135205. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. Gift of Ford Motor Company. Tractor. What comes to mind? Do you immediately conjure an image of a four-wheeled vehicle hitched to a plow? Do you picture a particular manufacturer? Think about horsepower? Link internal combustion engines to… Continue reading What comes to mind when you hear the word “tractor”?

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Working with the “enemy”, a horseman’s thoughts on tractors.

At heart, I always have and always will be an agricultural horseman. Yet, about 1965 I first learned to drive on a Ferguson “Little Grey Fergie” TE20 tractor, in effect, possibly the greatest enemy of the agricultural horse in the United Kingdom. From there, I moved on to such as Massey Ferguson 65, 135, 165… Continue reading Working with the “enemy”, a horseman’s thoughts on tractors.

Tocal’s first tractor

The arrival of the first tractor onto a farm was an important turning point in the history of any property. On a family farm it was the passing of an era involving the farm’s usually much-loved draft horses being set aside for a machine.  On some small farms it was only once the draft horse… Continue reading Tocal’s first tractor

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Categorised as Tractors

“Women on Tractors!” A few reflections on women and their “steel steeds” in post-war Polish agriculture

1. Probably Bronisława Pestkówna on the Ursus C-45 tractor, field of State Agricultural Farms in the Gdańsk district, second half of the 19th century 1940s. From the collection of the Archives of the Museum in Szreniawa The collection of the National Museum of Agriculture in Szreniawa includes 35 tractors. These are machines manufactured by the… Continue reading “Women on Tractors!” A few reflections on women and their “steel steeds” in post-war Polish agriculture

Yogurt in Greece

Editor’s Note: In our continuing series on yoghurt and related food products, we can now set off to Greece with Evangelos Karamanes through the kind help of Irina Stahl of the Ritual Year Working Group (part of the S.I.E.F. https://www.siefhome.org/wg/ry/). Greek yogurt has gained significant renown in international markets over the past few decades as… Continue reading Yogurt in Greece

Turkish Homemade Yoghurt

Editor’s Note: In our continuing series on Yoghurt and similar food products, we are pleased to turn to Turkey and welcome Tuncay Güneş and Vildane Özkan (Alieva) through the good offices of Tatiana Minniyakhmetova of the Ritual Year Working Group. DEFINITION Homemade yoghurt is a dairy product obtained as a result of fermentation of lactic… Continue reading Turkish Homemade Yoghurt

Sour Milk in Latvian National Cuisine

Editor’s Note: In our on-going cooperation with Tatiana Minniyakhmetova of The Ritual Year Working Group (S.I.E.F.), who has connected the AIMA to her colleagues in several countries, here is another installment in our series on yoghurt or yoghurt-like foods, this time from the wealth of traditions in Latvia by Aīda Rancāne. Traditional dairy products in… Continue reading Sour Milk in Latvian National Cuisine

The Bashkir dairy food katyk or oyotkan

The Bashkirs are one of the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Volga-Ural region, located at the junction of Asia and Europe. The majority of Bashkirs live in Bashkortostan (or Bashkiria) and there are diaspora groups outside it. Bashkir is a Turkic language belonging to the Kipchak branch. (See the corresponding Wikipedia articles.) The basis of the… Continue reading The Bashkir dairy food katyk or oyotkan

Traditional Hungarian Yogurt: tarhó

The Finno-Ugric-speaking Hungarian people, who migrated to Europe from the east and were genetically partially Finno-Ugric and mostly Turkic, settled in the territory of present-day Hungary in the 9th–10th centuries. In the 11th–13th centuries, several waves of Cumans (Kuns) and Jász people (nomadic Alanic people from the Pontic steppe) arrived from the east, who settled… Continue reading Traditional Hungarian Yogurt: tarhó

Yoghurt – a traditional food for Bulgarians

The natural connection between human beings, their labour and nature penetrates the worldview of all cultures from different historical eras and it determines the thoughts of a person within a traditional society, including Bulgarians. For example, wheat production and sheep breeding are highly significant for Bulgarians – they measure their fortune not only by the… Continue reading Yoghurt – a traditional food for Bulgarians

An Eye on Rye

At home most especially in northern climes and their corresponding latitudes in the southern hemisphere, breads made from rye are highly iconic in local and international identities, witness the Rye Route that runs through Estonia, where the National Agricultural Museum in Ülenurme, south of Tartu, held AIMA’s 2017 congress (1). Rye bread in many forms… Continue reading An Eye on Rye

Traditional Udmurt Yogurt – Yölpyd

Editor’s Note: This contribution by Tatiana Minniyakhmetova comes to the AIMA thanks to a collaborative effort with the Ritual Year Working Group, a section of the S.I.E.F. (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore) https://www.siefhome.org/wg/ry/  Its members are experts in calendar studies of all hues and, often as a consequence, in food cultures and festive events… Continue reading Traditional Udmurt Yogurt – Yölpyd

What the stained glass of Notre-Dame de Chartres cathedral tells us about stockraising

In the medieval Occident, ‘the countryside is everything’: nearly 90% of the population tilled the earth, and in the portals of churches, in frescos, stained glass windows or in prayer books, we see ever and again the works of the months, most of them relating directly to the main sectors of agriculture – grain-growing, wine-production… Continue reading What the stained glass of Notre-Dame de Chartres cathedral tells us about stockraising