Tumbledown did far too much traveling and far too little gardening this summer. Two of those trips took him home to Northwest Tennessee via Southern Illinois and Southeast Missouri. On one of those trips he was fortunate enough to discover the Southeast Missouri Agricultural Museum in Bertrand, Missouri (Southeast Missouri Bootheel, just north of New Madrid and east of Sikeston).
The museum is conveniently located near the intersection of I-57 and I-55.
Though much of the machinery in the building is poorly labeled, poorly sorted, and unrestored--and none appears to be used even for demonstration purposes--the display is well worth the modest price of admission ($5 per person) for the antique farm machinery enthusiast. The importance of the collection has also come to the attention of the National Park Service, as the listing in the Draft Heritage Study demonstrates.
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Tumbledown hopes that the collection will be made available to persons who are interested in studying, copying and restoring these valuable parts of our heritage and for use at working "living history" farms and demonstration projects.
Address:
Route 1, Box 875
Bertrand, MO 63823
Phone: (573) 471-3945
Hours:
9-4 Mon.-Sat.
1-4 Sun.
The owners boast that they have under one roof "Missouri's largest agricultural museum with over 6,000 pieces of antique farm machinery," in addition to the grounds, where visitors will find two log cabins, one wooden railroad caboose, and a relocated railroad depot.
Readers interested in finding out more about now-antique farm machinery when it was "state of the art," can view sketches and descriptions in the article on crop management in the Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. Those readers interested in commercial collectors' information about vintage farm equipment, see the Farm Collector.
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