Farming with Plows
The four most common plows in the history of Southern agriculture are the walking plow, the sulky plow, the gang plow, and the tractor plow. The walking plow, usually pulled by mules, was guided by a plow man, who walked behind the implement and held the plow handles. The sulky plow, invented by John Deere in 1875, had a seat and wheels to permit the plowman to sit while mules pulled the tool across the field. The gang plow, which featured multiple bottoms, three wheels, and a seat allowing a plowmen to ride, was also horse- or mule-drawn. The tractor plow, pulled by a tractor, revolutionized agriculture by not only allowing farmers to cut far more furrows than would have been possible with earlier animal-drawn implements, but it also afforded farmers far greater flexibility in terms of the plow blades that could he attached to the implement.
The cutting tools on a plow are commonly called bottoms. Agricultural historians commonly classify bottoms into four groups:
a) moldboard, breaks up the soil and turns it to one side, and "molds" it
b) a disk is designed to break up hard packed soil
c) chisel (C-shaped) plows lift soil without turning it over