Three-Pronged Pitchfork
Dimensions208 × 20.7 × 10.8 cm
Credit LineGift of Mr. George Bycraft, London, Ontario, 1963
Object number1963.003.160
Label TextThis pitchfork would have been used to pitch material including hay, straw, leaves, and manure. The more tines (prongs) a tool had, the more efficient it would be for moving materials. Efficiency was a priority before the mechanization of agricultural work, when reaping, threshing, and pitching was done by hand.
"[In the 1920s,] [h]ay was mowed, raked, pitched into small haycocks rounded on top to shed the rain, then when sufficiently dried was forked onto a wagon where sling ropes were laid out." (Bycraft/Zavitz Family History by Anna Bycraft Ward, p. 170)
NameFork, Cultivating
