What Did a Farmer Do in Spring?

Advertisement for a seeder, 1880.

Monitor Seeder, from Illustrated Catalogue of Agricultural Machinery, Pilkington, Busch & Co., St. Paul, Minnesota. 1880. 
Minnesota Historical Society Library Collection, S681 .P6

"No more dallying was allowed, no more tentative assaults—the seeding was begun. Mr. Stewart drove a load of wheat into the field and dispersed the white sacks across the land, like fence posts. The hired man followed with the broadcast seeder, while Lincoln moved ... behind the fifty-tooth harrow, with mingled feelings of exultation and dismay...

...The hired man never halted, except to put in seed. Lincoln could hear his sharp commands to the team, and the noise of the seeder, as he pushed his way from one side of the farm to the other..."

—Hamlin Garland, 1899

Hamlin Garland, Boy Life on the Prairie (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1899).