This approximately 90-year-old hay rake may find a home at Hall’s Store in the Ocean View Historic Village.
This approximately 90-year-old hay rake may find a home at Hall’s Store in the Ocean View Historic Village. Waterproof Electrical Plugs And Sockets
Ocean View Historical Village President Barbara Slavin met with area resident Steve McCully last week to discuss a rare find unearthed when the new phase of Millville By the Sea was being developed. It’s a hay rake used to collect cut hay or straw, and initial estimates place the farm implement as being about 90 years old.
The hay rake was entangled in a tree and was unable to be extricated all these years because the tree kept growing through the rake blades — that is, until McCully and his friends from Millville By the Sea brought their modern day chainsaws to the job.
“I met with Barb Slavin because she and her board are the originators of some of the items in the Ocean View Historic Village,” McCully said.
As Millville By the Sea’s second phase was being developed, McCully decided to explore an old shed structure that is visible from the roadways now that land is being cleared.
“There is an old farm shed from the 1960s or the 1970s which you could see from Roxana Road only during the winter, when the trees were bare,” McCully said. “I went out there to see what was in the shed. Because a tree had literally grown into the hay rake, it was left there, undisturbed and stranded. A partner and I were able to cut the tree down, remove the hay rake, and worked with the construction crews to bring it forward.”
“We may think of ourselves as the ‘beach house community,’ but it reminds us of how it all got started in agriculture,” said McCully. “Millville had been passed over even when the original church camps were started on the beach. But after they dug the canals and built the tax ditches, we have the land available to be developed now.”
“My friend Bob Myers and I did this work, and we would work around the tree to extricate this thing. It took us four hours with chainsaws, handsaws and then the chisel to get the last piece of the tree removed from the hay rake,” he said.
“The tree literally grew right through it. The tree was entangled in the rake blades.”
“It has been made with wrought iron, instead of steel,” which is why the local residents thought the hay rake was of historical value.
A hay rake is an agricultural rake used to collect cut hay or straw into windrows for later collection by a baler or a loader wagon. It is also designed to help fluff up the hay and turn it over so that it may dry. Early versions, like the one found by McCully and his neighbors, were called a dump rake, and this technology is indeed of an early 20th century design.
“Ardent is the developer of the Millville By the Sea area, and Rod Hart, the site manager, agreed it was worth the time for the construction workers to bring it out of the area. Bryan & Sons are the infrastructure people at Millville By the Sea” who did the extraction work, McCully said.
The old farm implement was found in a secluded area of the Millville By the Sea community’s undeveloped land. It may be from the 1930s, but the Ocean View Historic Village will be making that determination.
“It was left behind next to an old shed,” said McCully.
The find, he added, “speaks to the largely forgotten agricultural past of Millville. We freed it and rescued it, and I’m working next week to donate it to the Ocean View Historical Village display at Hall’s Store.”
“I was hoping our MBTS community would have an interest in building a display area and a plaque explaining the farm implement, but leadership here declined, as they said our look and feel was now ‘beachy,’ versus ag history,” said McCully. “Personally, I think we need to keep doing whatever we can to help our grandkids understand where food comes from, and the importance of agriculture and our remaining farmers.”
There are presently other farm implements at the Hall’s Store replica country store in the historic village. The Hall’s Store replica also features a meeting room with galley kitchen in the back, suitable for historical society functions and educational programs, and available to be rented for weddings, parties and family reunions.
The Hall’s Store building cost about $300,000 and was paid for through grants and donations.
“We want to keep history alive, because this whole area was once called Hall’s Store. We feel it’s important to pass on history,” Slavin, president of the historical society and a native of the area whose roots reach back about
10 generations, previously told the Coastal Point.
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The Coastal Point is a local newspaper published each Friday and distributed in the Bethany Beach, South Bethany, Fenwick Island, Ocean View, Millville, Dagsboro, Frankford, Selbyville, Millsboro, Long Neck and Georgetown, Delaware areas.
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