Wheels Friday

 Today I discovered a new meme which is just up my alley. It is Wheels Friday over at Gemma’s Greyscale Territory. Here are the rules:

WELCOME TO WHEELS FRIDAY
Here you may post ANYTHING related to WHEELS!
You may offer some explanation OR you may simply let us enjoy the view!

cars - vintage and modern - exterior or interior
trains/buses/trams
trucks
steering wheels
bikes - motorised or pushbikes
carts/wagons - vintage or modern
trolleys
paddlewheeler
inner mechanisms - e.g. wheels of a clock
whirlygigs
art/ornament based on wheels

Last weekend my husband and I went to the annual festival at Cyrus Hall McCormick’s farm and someplace out in Steeles Tavern, VA. If you need me to jog your memory, Mr. McCormick invented the “reaper” which revolutionized farming in America.
Before his reaper, our country depended upon manual labor to cut down the fields of grains. To learn more about his invention, go to this Wikipedia entry. Another interesting fact is Mr. McCormick and Abraham Lincoln were both born a few days apart...Lincoln on  February 14, 1809, and McCormick on February 15, 1809.

Present Day Hay Bale Hauler

The wheel from one of the old McCormick tractors.

The Shenandoah Valley Agricultural Research and Extension Center includes more than 900 acres of owned and leased land in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Research and Extension programs at the center cover livestock production, forages and forage systems, and small-scale forestry and wood lot management. The center’s beef cattle programs include breeding, reproduction, nutrition, and management, as well as controlled rotational grazing and forage systems. Sheep programs include ram performance testing and commercial ewe lamb development. The goal of this work is to help develop a more forage-based sustainable agricultural industry in Virginia and to be a leader in livestock and forage-based research in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. In the past five years, several small-scale forestry demonstration areas were developed to educate landowners about long-term management of their valuable forest resources.  

A two-acre memorial plot at the center pays tribute to Cyrus McCormick and the ingenuity of the McCormick family. The memorial area is designated a National Historic Landmark and Virginia Wayside site, and is toured by thousands of visitors every year.