2. In the early years of American agriculture, farmers worked hard to feed their families.
3. Now,
4. The name John Deere has been with farmers every step of the way.
5. But not many know about John Deere the man.
6. John Deere was born in
7. There were only 17 states in the union and Thomas Jefferson was the president.
8. John Deere's father was a tailor. His mother a seamstress.
9. When John was just 4 years old his father was lost at sea leaving his mother Sara to raise John and his 5 brothers and sisters.
10. With his family struggling to stay above poverty and his educational opportunities limited, it would be young John
iinnovation that would alter the course of American agriculture history.
11. in his early teens John Deere took an apprenticeship with a local blacksmith.
12. His goal was to make a skilled trade so he could make his way in the world.
13. He liked to tinker and he liked to he liked to fix things. He clearly had skills with his hands.
14. He soon gained considerable fame for careful workmanship and ingenuity.
15. His highly polished hay forks and shovels were in great demand throughout
16. He was a person of integrity. His word was his bond.
17. He said he was going to do something, he did it and people counted on it.
18. It was during this period that john made a young woman from a wealthy family named
19. Despite their backgrounds the 2 were married in 1827. John was 23, Demaris was 22.
20. For the next decade John and his growing family would move from town to town throughout central
21. Frustrated and in search of a better promise, Mr. Deere decided to join the pioneers who were heading out west
22. In 1836 he left
23. There he opened up another blacksmith shop. It would be in that shop that agricultural history would forever be changed.
24. He began receiving work within days of opening his shop.
25. There was much to be done shoeing horses and oxen and repairing the plows and other equipment for
the pioneer farmers.
26. from them he learned of the serious problem they encountered in trying to farm the fertile soil of the
27. The cast iron plows they brought with them from the east were designed for the light sandy
28. The rich Midwestern soil floundered the plow box and every few steps it was necessary to scrape the soil from the plow.
29. What makes this area such a different place is this area was covered with that ancient prairie grass, been here for thousands and thousands of years.
30. I don't know if you know about prairie grass but it has a root system 15-20 feet deep.
31. These root systems decomposed underground, creating a rich, thick black soil that eastern plows couldn't cut through.
32. John Deere's inclination to tinker and fix, would bring results that would change the course of history for these early American farmers.
33. He used a trick he got from his mother who was a sewing lady trick of the trade. She used to make him polish her sewing needles so that it would slide through the fabric better and when he became a farm implement blacksmith, he just employed that trick of the trade by polishing the ties, shovels , hoes and pitchforks. It just worked through the ground better.
35. John Deere got a piece of a broken sawmill blade from the local sawmill. It was made of the finest English steel and shaped it into that trapezoid steel, it really made a difference.
36. People ask me all the time, was it the shape of plow, was it because it was polished or because it was steel?
37. I have to say yes, yes and yes.
38. It was that combination of those three things that made his plow successful when the existing technology plow wouldn't work.
39. See he was no different than any other pioneer blacksmith moving out west
40. But he had a good idea and he built a better mousetrap and people beat a path to his door to get it.
41. Changed agricultural history as we know it.
42. The self scouring plow enabled the farmers to farm the land and thus settle in the
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