You then save the best seeds for the following year to plant and start another crop. You water and nourish all that come up and have potential, in hopes of harvesting the fruits of your labor. You always plant extra, some for the birds, some because they do not germinate. Watch them grow and then rejoice when they reach down and start helping others. Teach them as much as they are capable of learning. Always look for the individual that has both the fire in their belly and their head screwed on straight so you can reach down and pull them up to the next level. There are some that have never had a person that allows them to try, or explained things so they understand. There are some individuals that are unsafe to themselves and others. By close supervision, I mean a dedicated adult whose sole purpose is to watch over the individual and keep them safe, and whose secondary responsibility is to teach and guide them through the activity.Ĭertainly this is not for everyone. IF the individual has the desire, then teach the individual what they need to know, what they must know, and how to be safe. Let them test the water, under the CLOSE supervision of an adult. They use every excuse available and even invent new ones to protect little ones. Today people try to protect everyone from everything. As they grow older they have the experience and desire to step up and work beside the men. They CAN physically handle the job, and are mentally responsible. Early teen farm kids can not physically do a days work along side an adult so they are the ones that drive the equipment, heavy equipment, combines, etc years before the state will even consider them for issuing a drivers license. So we compensate by making tools to fit their size.Ī young adult (starting at about teenage years, maybe a bit before) has advanced physically and mentally and can understand the dangers involved, and can use adult tools. They have the desire, and the drive sure enough, but are limited physically. A child is not physically able to handle the size and weight of adult tools. Let us separate the children from the young adults. Either way, I think they purposely wanted the boy to grow into the man tools instead of giving the boy boy tools and expecting him to outgrow the smaller tools. I'm guessing they found ways to raise the helper to the right level of the anvil or had the young apprentice step up to the lower striking anvil set up for heavy sledge work. It's doubtful those old blacksmiths had little anvils for their little helpers. Boys helped in the smithy and got accustomed to using the grown-up tools. Think about the old smithies back in the 18th and 19th century and much older. I think this applies to this situation as well. There's a saying in the military : Train like you fight. One day the youngster will not need the thing to stand on and will be ready to continue on using big tools. I think If I had a youngster in the forge I'd just cut a large diameter stump or make a solid board platform that raised him or her up to the proper level to use a bigger anvil. Sure, the 75 pound anvil was likely not quality hardened steel and may have even been an ASO, but not having the anvil move helped as well. When I got my 179 # Trenton I noticed a huge difference. My first anvil was a 75 # little thing and it moved around a lot. This loses some of the efficiency of moving the metal. For a child you are not going to have a premium anvil stand set-up so it's likely a small anvil will be secured to a smallish stump set to the lower level which I believe will move around as the youngster strikes it. A small anvil, even if it is well secured to a base, will move around with every strike of the hammer. I think efficiency comes into play as well.
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