Why do I find so many spoons in plowed fields

[jabbo]

on old farms. Can't count how many I found in plowed fields. Yesterday and today I found 4 more. Spoons belong in the kitchen, how do they get lost hundreds of feet from the house. Did the old time farmers eat their squirrel stew and plow at the same time. Any farmers here have an answer.

 

[Critterhunter]

Yep, eating out in the field while plowing and such. Remember they didn't have plastic forks and spoons for that. If you are finding spoons won't be long until you dig up a solid sterling silver one. Many were back then. A friend dug up a nice sterling one at a mowed field one time after we dug up a bunch of plated silver ones on pervious hunts. His had a lion engraved on the handle. Never did ask if he checked on it's value, as some can be worth a ton of money if they have the right halmark on them. Still a good chunk of money in silver weight alone these days. An easy way to tell is if it gives you a coin reading when you dig it that it's really silver, as not all are marked as being silver. Plated silver ones will often read lower on the scale like in the pull tab range. I find that kind of curious...Wouldn't you think it would still read as a coin since silver plating covers the entire inner metal?

One time in the woods a friend found a silver spoon. It had the handle bent into a loop and we figured it was done like that so a baby could hold it easily while eating, because you could tell it was done on purpose. That spoon also had a chunk of silver cut from the spoon area on purpose. I think they may have cut silver off spoons/forks/knives like that to pay people by weight value in silver maybe? Anybody with any info on that?

 

[jim tn]

Since a couple of my forum buddies have tagged me "the old guy" and I did grow up on a farm, yes, we did often carry eating utensils in our lunch boxes. Quite often during harvest time when time was of the essence, noon and evening meals were brought out into fields and dinner and supper was quickly eaten in the shade of a combine or tractor tire. Not every knife, fork or spoon always made it back to the kitchen. HH jim tn

 

[plidn1]

I dug a salt shaker in a park once.

 

[jabbo]

Critter and Jim say farmers ate in the field. Seems to be a logical answer why we find spoons and forks in the plowed fields.

 

[Critterhunter]

Sure, I've dug salt and pepper shakers but only once was one silver. I dug just the sterling silver lid to a salt/pepper shaker and it was HUGE. About as big around as....Oh, I don't know...Maybe twice the daimeter of an oreo cookie or maybe a bit bigger even. It was also tall and thick. Huge amount of silver. It wasn't all that deep at all and at a pounded out site. I suspect hundreds of others had detected that signal and passed over it thinking it was a pop can or something. I don't know about you but often a pop can won't have a real "quality" top of coin sound to it. It'll have a lot of lower garbage signal mixed in here and there when you sweep over it. This signal was big but it stayed "pure coin" the entire time I swept over it back and fourth. That's what made me dig it. I figured maybe it was at least perhaps several silver coins piled together or perhaps a silver dollar or something.

 

[Roscue2]

What Critter and Jim say is the answer. I have found spoons and other utensils in not only fields but also parks and peoples yards. They are everywhere and many from back then were sterling.

 

[WV62]

Just wonder if kids carried them out to play in the dirt. If that were the case they are small shovels not spoons. If they were lost from lunches you would think you would find about the same amount of forks.

Just a thought,

Ron in WV

 

[GunnarMN]

that is really intresting to me , as i hunt farm fields, and i wonder if somone brought thear pay out in a sac and lost it ya feilds where a place full of people doing people things, and i have found spoons in the farm feild, and forks,

 

[cosmic]

Eating out of mason jars..

 

[fowlercharles]

Hi Jabbo, I think in some cases , besides folks eating in the shade close to where they were plowing, there were many times "earlier" home sites were brought under the plow.after the present , or later known homesites would have been built.Many early ones burned down.These should allow for some spoons etc.to show up,,, But,,, I have been hunting off and on for 3 years now an 1808 site where the "original" homesite was lived on up until just before the CW,when everyone moved on and the site went back to nature for many years when it was then pushed /cut/ cleared, and finally put under cultivation up until present day. What is really strange is that I have found very little evidence other than cut nails, ceramic shards and one large womans coat button to prove there was ever any type house there in the field.. No spoons, no forks, utensils of any kind and those folks raised 13 kids there. They did move away after many years after the Father was shot and killed, so they would have certainly packed and left with most of their things, Surely 13 kids would have lost or misplaced a spoon or two now and then. I can also imagine that after the "old place finally saw the plow, for so many years there would have surely been much of it spotted, picked up and packed home, or flung down the hill into the woods. Fact is I made a few choice digs/finds(1803 1/2 Real, 1812 Buttons)only a few feet outside the field area where Arch. units(digs) proved pretty much to have been the rear yard/ per sey, outhouses and trash dump of the original house. Older sites do not have lots of "trash" as we know it and was mostly of broken dishes. The bare bones older sites did not have that much to begin with so had less to loose, but I am really freaked out for not having dug the first kitchen utensil, and I and some others have walked over several acres and come up empty handed.???? Years ago I dug another site where in the woods a small clear spot with plowed ground still much visible I was digging knives forks spoons ,glass,small copper stuff,(suspenders, buttons) iron , nails etc and an almost worn away bent Barber Quarter. All the mystery just makes it better and more "funner" for us !! Oh yeah, we have to consider that the kitchen in the older homesites were built seperate from the main house due to their "fire hazard", so that may/may not add some insite to your spoon mystery. HH, Charlie

 

[jabbo]

Charlie, Thanks for sharing your experience at those two places. Farms might be similar, but maybe not that similar. For sure they are fun places to search for old stuff of all kinds. Yesterday I went back to the (long gone) farm hoping to find more old silver. Found only one IH penny and a Shield nickle (with stars)., buckles, complete pocket watch, 2 skeleton keys, and old copper scrap. Would be great to dig up a jar of buried coins, but 99% of the time I ignore those really huge signals.

 

[Critterhunter]

The reason why many like to hunt farm fields and find old coins is that many farmers would be working with the horse and plow or on the tractor and pull their hanky out to wipe the sweat off their face, and in doing that coins get lost. Also, I've heard of one instance where a farmer hid his cache of silver coins in the dirt in the hog pen. Later that dirt and pig waste was dug up and spread on the field as fertilizer, along with the cache of coins. I remember a guy saying he found a bunch of silver in one area in a field due to that.

 

[GunnarMN]

One day a farmer was out in his feild, plowing when his tractor broke , he had to get some money and go to the hardware store in town and he put all the change in his pocket and came back and was under the tractor and all the coins fell out and got plowed under . , I cant tell you how many tools i have found in farm feilds they set them on the tire or tractor and forget , i found 3 silver quarters in on farm feild a 1905 ,1926, and 1948 no dimes I wondered was it a pocket spill or the pay for the workers,

 

[BarberBill]

Part of the appeal in this hobby for me is the fact that now and then we dig up the most unlikely targets in seemingly very unlikely places. I live 5 miles out along a county road, no sidewalks near my house yet I dug a Philippine Centavo from my yard one day. Don't know whether it was lost by previous occupants or in fill dirt maybe or who knows? Anyway until we recover the target there's always the question of what is it?
BB

 

[John(Tx)]

I picked alot of cotton as a young boy back in the mid 50's, we used to eat out in the field. I think about those day and really miss them, miss seeing my grand and great grandparents. John