Of Muck Spreaders and Music Boxes

One of the best parts of the Hardware Meetup is the conversations we have at dinner afterwards. Take last night for example. For some reason the conversation turned to muck spreaders, tractor powered devices which spread, er, fertilizer over fields that it may enrich the land and lead to larger crops. I wondered whether, after you’d finished muck spreading, you actually cleaned your muck spreader, and if so what with?

Anyhoo, an owner of a muck spreader is keen to have a musical chime attached to his tractor that could play a jaunty, ice cream van themed, tune while going about his business spreading other peoples, er, business. He felt that this would add a lot to the occasion and we were inclined to agree. While not actually being that keen to go along and audition the device when in use.

It turns out that musical chime systems that were used on ice cream vans in the last century are quite collectable and fetch good prices on eBay. We took a look at one lot which was selling for a tidy sum for what was just a music box mechanism attached to an amplifier. So we are going to look out for a music box mechanism and some suitable hardware.

So, if you are ever passing by a field and hear distant musical chimes that make you fancy buying a “ninety nine”, accompanied by a truly horrendous whiff, you’ll know that we got it to work…