Buffalo Island: Breaking Plow, Arkansas

Arkansas residents Rudy and Doodle explain what it was like to use a breaking plow that's on display in the Buffalo Island Museum in Arkansas. This story is connected to Buffalo Island Central EAST's online story map From Swamp to Farmland and interactive exhibits at the Buffalo Island Museum, which both trace the the history of agriculture in the area. Either click on the video to watch it or follow the instructions below to make it magically come to life like it does in the Museum by scanning this "Breaking Plow" picture in the HP Reveal app.

Doodle (00:06): It's a breaking plow. You hook a team of mules to it. And you grab this right here and you start plowing it. And that's a small one.

Doodle (00:16): All I could ever break was about two and a half, maybe three acres. But a lot of people could break more. I couldn't. That's about all you could do on one of them. If you could break two and a half or three acres a day, that's all you could get. And that would be a long day, too.

Doodle (00:36): And back when Rudy and I was growing up, there was still a lot of stumps in the field, roots. And that'd hit a root and cut it two and it'd fly back, hit you on the shin. Do you remember anything like that?

Rudy (00:48): Yeah.

Doodle (00:48): That old mule would be pulling, you'd have lines around your waist. And to stop you'd go over the breaking plow. But, that was way of life back then, we didn't know any different. We had a lot of fun doing it. But you was tired at night.

Asset ID: 2018.20.08
Themes: The Way We Worked, agriculture, Arkansas, farming, tools, antiques, history, Augmented Reality, AR, inventions, farm equipment, fields, hard work
Date recorded: November 2018
Length of recording: 01:02 m
Related traveling exhibition: The Way We Worked
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST (Environmental and Spatial Technology, Inc.); Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas
More information: https://museumonmainstreet.org/blog-node/storytelling-augmented-reality-rural-arkansas