#bottle hunter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr is available in 18 languages.

blueiskewl · 4 months

Text

Lost and Found: Bottle Hunter Digs Extraordinary Farmland Treasures

Tom Askjem is a time traveler. Every May to November, he disappears into the bowels of the earth, descends to depths of 13’-plus, and returns to the surface with treasure—bottles and glassware from farming’s past.

After 1,800 pits and hundreds of thousands of relics, Askjem is equal parts archeologist, thrill seeker, and mole. Muscle on dirt, the North Dakota farm boy has turned an addiction into a career, multiple books, and a captivating YouTube channel with millions of views. However, Askjem seeks more than glass.

“I’m digging for adventure, history, and love,” he says. The past is in these holes and there are countless numbers of them across farmland.”

Time to hunt with a master.

The Infection

On the flats of extreme eastern North Dakota’s Traill County, Askjem, 32, prepares for a dig trip. “No mountains and no hills in the Red River Valley,” he describes. “You can see your dog run away for days. The land is mostly featureless, other than a few big cottonwoods and shelter belts where farms used to be.”

A mop of blonde hair sits atop a 6’-tall, lanky frame as Askjem saddles his pony—a Honda Civic. At the current mileage rate, the Civic will be junkyard fodder before it has a scratch: 60,000 backroad miles added to the odometer in the past six months.

Askjem piles layers of gear into the trunk, including three of each tool for insurance: shovels, pronged garden forks, trampoline pads, probe rods, buckets, plastic scoopers, trowels, tents, sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, air mattresses, clothes, and waterproof, Redwing leather work boots.

“It never gets old,” he says, wearing a wide grin. “I caught the infection when I was a kid.”

Digging Bodies

Pushed from the Grand Forks area by the historic Red River flood of 1997, Askjem moved to a farm outside Buxton at six years young. The main property was an 1878 homestead—a progression from sod house to log cabin to the present standing 1898 farmhouse decked in Victorian-era woodwork and hardware.

Surrounded by history, including the skeletons of old wagons and rusting machinery, Askjem explored a 5-acre patch of woods on the property, and chanced on a garbage dump: pop bottles and trash.

Askjem dug.

“I went deep and found stuff going back to 1898. When you’re a kid living in the country, there’s no going down the street and there’s no hanging with friends to play video games—you make your own adventure. I started hitting up all the farmers I could find for leads.”

Behind the wheel of a rattling go-cart, Askjem sought Buxton old-timers and collected tips on abandoned houses. “They all helped me,” he says. “Nobody cared where I hunted because I was just a little kid exploring for all the right reasons.”

“I’ve still got an elementary school journal with an assignment describing my weekend,” he adds. “I wrote, ‘Me and Mom dug up old bodies.’ The teacher marked my paper out of concern,” Askjem describes, with an easy, deep chuckle. “I meant to spell bottles, not bodies. But it shows I was truly hooked.”

Indeed. Wonderfully hooked.

Soft Landing

Why are bottles buried under farmland and old house sites?

Prior to plastic and synthetics, glassware held everything: medicine, hygiene products, alcohol, soda, and beyond. Glass was it.

Additionally, prior to waste disposal services, homeowners discarded trash on-site—in back yard outhouses, trash depressions, burn pits, and wells or cisterns. In short time, the various ground receptacle spots were filled and forgotten.

“Let’s say, for example, a family moved in around 1880,” Askjem explains. “That site likely has two or three outhouse locations prior to World War l. The outhouse spots filled up at a rate according to family size. I dug one farmhouse site that had six outhouses in a 10-year span. Folks went into the outhouses and threw away bottles: medicine, opiates, beer, whiskey. It was convenient and private, and had a soft landing, and got covered quickly. Even now, the bottles often are still preserved.”

“Generally, these houses also had a burn pit and/or dump pit. In the early days, they burned all trash in the stove for heat. Also, homestead bucket wells were filled up with trash and bottles once they were replaced by pump wells. Cisterns also were eventually filled up, but most of those are associated with houses in town.”

And the sites remain, he emphasizes, hiding intact relics beyond the reach of farm machinery or tillage equipment.

X Marks the Spot

Location. Location. Location. Other than a tip or invitation, how does Askjem find dig sites?

X marks the spot, at least in the county courthouse or public library. He spends winters poring over early property transaction documents. “I look at lot sales. If several lots sold for $100 each in 1880, but one sold for $1,000 in 1885, the price climb tells the story and likely represents a building location.”

“I also read old newspaper archives, looking for hotel or business advertisements,” Askjem continues. “Then I can look up the proprietor’s name and keep tightening the scope, narrowing down the exact building location.”

“Every single house is different, but generally, in the countryside, outhouses were 30 paces out the back door. In the city, where most lots were 140’ long, outhouses could be as close as 5-10 paces.”

Confident of a site’s potential, Askjem first asks for permission to dig from the landowner. “Property owners are always so kind to me and I don’t hide anything I find. They’re curious about what is in the ground, just like anybody else.”

Second, he grids out the site. “I put down markers 2 paces apart, maybe 20 paces long. I push probe rods into ground and feel for compaction differences. Depending on the location, I’ll call in and have utility lines marked out for power and gas.”

Decked in Levi’s and a tank-top, it’s time to tunnel.

Claustrophobic Comfort

Shovel in hand, Askjem descends into a layer cake of dirt: black topsoil to brown-colored clay to telltale ash to a use layer containing treasure.

“Generally, I go deep to find old items in quantity. The earliest bottles were used to the last drop by farmers and thrown out empty. Therefore, when they froze in brutal Dakota winters, the glass didn’t break from liquid expansion.”

As Askjem extracts glass vessels from the dirt and grime, his encyclopedic knowledge registers with each find. He recognizes the type, manufacturer, and age. Ink bottles, hygiene bottles, medicine bottles, beer bottles, soda bottles—and far more spill from the holes.

“I find patented medicine bottles across the country, but my favorite are soda bottles because they are unique to their locale and have character. The old soda bottles are usually marked with the bottler and town name because they were returnable.”

The outhouse pits are typically 6’-deep at home sites, with an average size of 6’-by-4’-by-3’. “I’ve dug ghost towns, dug saloons, train depots, and pool halls that were 12’ long, 4’ wide, and 8’ deep. I remember a hotel pit that was 20’-by-20’ and 8’ deep. There was a military fort with pits behind the barracks that was 12’ long, 4’ wide, and 13.5’ deep: That was a week’s worth of digging.”

Askjem’s subterranean realm provides no comfort to the claustrophobic. At 8’-9’, he braces the holes with woodwork. “I’m in a solid clay base that doesn’t cave, but I have a healthy respect for the ground’s limitation. Sometimes, it looks like I’m digging a rabbit hole.”

Preserved in nature’s freezer, the artifacts unearthed by Askjem often are in phenomenal condition.

“Pieces of newspaper can still be read; bottle labels are legible; white lime used in decomposition is visible; and undigested seeds are everywhere. Even 120-year-old human waste sometimes is perfectly preserved and still smells like hell. I wear a hydrogen sulfide respirator in those cases.”

“It’s all there; almost like it was dropped yesterday.”

Ghosts in the Ground

In 2022, Askjem began chronicling his digs via a YouTube channel, Below the Plains, and soon captured millions of views. At two posts per week, he gins footage at a steady rate to feed the algorithm, a tough task considering the ground in his geography is frozen from mid-November to mid-May.

Additionally, Askjem has written two in-depth books (Nebraska Soda Bottles 1865-1930 and A History of North Dakota Bottling Operations 1879-1930) and has more on the way. “I put the bottle prices in the books because they can sell for a whole lot and I always tell the landowners. Listing prices draw criticism, but that’s important to me because it helps preserve the item, and preservation of history is what drives me.”

Covered in dust or mud at the end of each day in digging season, Askjem is highly respectful of what he finds—almost reverent after 1,800 digs. “I appreciate everything I uncover because it represents a part of someone’s daily life and existence. There’s nothing wrong with coveting bottles, but I’m really in those holes for the moment of discovery.”

Even when not digging, Askjem is on the move, surfing on the coasts or river diving for lost cargo. In the decades to come, will he continue burrowing into the past? “Twenty years from now, I hope I’m still digging and there’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now.”

“There’s not an infinite amount of lost bottle sites, but there’s certainly an incredibly high number,” he continues. “There were 300,000 homestead farms in North Dakota with a minimum of one well, one outhouse, and one trash dump. And that doesn’t include towns where most of the population lived. There are millions of these sites in North Dakota and far more in other states.”

Respect to a freewheeling hunter like no other. Bottles draw the eye, but ghosts draw the heart: “The moment never gets old when you uncover a bottle and find that history,” Askjem adds. “Never.”

By CHRIS BENNETT.

#Lost and Found: Bottle Hunter Digs Extraordinary Farmland Treasures #Tom Askjem #glass #glass bottles #ancient glass #ancient artifacts #archeology #archeolgst #history #ancient history #history news #treasure #treasure hunter #antiques #bottle hunter #long post #long reads

53 notes · View notes

hezuart · 2 years

Text

Little Nightmares: Channel Change page 7/finale

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [final here]

~~~

With that, the bootstrap paradox was broken.

And Mono was free.

End...? ( two mini sequel comic planned to be made in the future)

Hope you enjoyed!

1K notes · View notes

deviousfatestudio · 3 months

Text

First au of mine is of course bounty hunter au.

basically the only thought process I have is after failing to do family harmony they really just went “fuck it we ball” but ball as in murder.

Family motto: the family that kills together, stays together!

JD is the leader of course but he’s way more laid back about it. Of course he is he can easily vent his frustrations now! He’s very protective of his baby brothers. Also he treats himself to nice things and his brothers love that for him. JD is the one who can hunt anyone down in a forest environment and the best tracker, Branch is second and his little protege.

Bruce and Floyd are the manipulators of the group one with attractiveness and the other with emotions.

Clay is the one who thinks out the traps and all possible ways it could go wrong. He, of course, manages the finances and finds their targets. He’s serious but also best at torture and having fun with it.

Branch is the Jack of all trades. He learned from the best after all! Master trap maker like clay while being a manipulator of both charm and emotions. Of course he’s a top notch tracker like his oldest brother too!

Poppy: I support family rights but also family wrongs

#trolls john dory #bounty hunter au #trolls band together #brozone #trolls jd #Bloody Bounty Hunter Au #traditional art #fanart #out of my five aus inhave si far #this and one other brozone are like #the most wholesome and stabld #you dont even want to know about bottle branch au #poor bby #trolls

138 notes · View notes

phddyke · 1 year

Text

So this confirmed two of my long-held theories:

1. Grimwalkers DO come out as fully grown men.

2. Belos chose to make Hunter a child on purpose so he’d be easier to abuse and manipulate.

Also the fact that they had to use a gory discretion shot for this…

#i know some people thought they came out as babies but i was like no way is belos bottle-feeding those things #also there would be no time considering just HOW MANY he had #toh spoilers #the owl house #the owl house season 3 #toh s3 spoilers #toh s3 #toh s3e2 #for the future #grimwalker #grimwalkers #the golden guard #toh the golden guard #past golden guards #grimwalker lore #hunter toh #hunter the golden guard #emperor belos #philip wittebane

932 notes · View notes

echelorn · 1 year

Text

the incoming fanfics will probably look like:

He’s falling, the bane of his existence; he’s a contradiction, a paradox, he’s the last piece in his solved puzzle, a mystery he wants to unravel— in the clutch of his chains and silken sheets.

#sctir #sctir spoilers #sung hyunjae #han yoojin #princess arc #give me all the sap #my s-class hunters #the s classes that i raised #s classes that i raised #also something like #the star he'd keep in a bottle for his own drinking pleasure #gettit? cause he's falling #like a shooting star #we all thought of drinking a star #anw

379 notes · View notes

analiavs · 3 months

Text

Valentines Day Headcanons for the Goon Squad

Remy

The girlfriend he uses as a beard either gets the ultimate valentines, that he's going to use as content for his tiktok. Or he forgets and gets her wilted roses.

His centuars and favorite bull are the true winners on vday. Suddenly everybody gets a hands on grooming session and all the apples they could eat.

Bailey

Has no valentines and makes it everyone else's problem. If you stand close enough you can get psychic damage from his pining. Don't let him catch you enjoying life or a valentines. He pretends he doesn't care, but very clearly does.

If you check the likes on his priv its just valentines day hate posts.

Briar

Loves it, one of his busiest days. All the loneliest losers show up. Schedules special shows throughout the day. Personally doesn't celebrate it. He's pimpin' folk out, he'll never fall for a hoe. Maybe drinks a big bottle of wine, and watches himself in the mirror in some red lingerie.

Eden

If he doesn't have an unlucky spouse DO NOT go in the woods on Valentines day. If he does have a spouse, does nothing for valentines day, because he "doesn't believe in it". If his spouse gets him something his present is dick... but they were probably getting that regardless.

Wren

Usually has a valentines, if not hangs with his boys. Strip poker with the boys 🫦

Zephyr

Handsome swashbuckler probably takes someone on a date on his ship to watch the sundown. Something something because of the implication. If there's a raid on valentines day he might seduce the other captain.

Harper

Schedules his favorite patients appointments. Might have a couple dick appointments too. Definitely brings Quinn his sperm bank proposal

Quinn

Denies Harper's sperm bank proposal. Has a date with his favorite tentababydad at the end of the night. He might have the most romantic night. Fancy dinner, tentacle massage, sex. His tentacles are special

Edit: just like he is on valentines day I forgot Leighton

Has no one. Tries to blackmail people into going on a date with him, but it’s valentines day. Special shout out to his dog person, they’ve got it ruff.

#remy the farmer #remylover6969 #degrees of lewdity #bailey the caretaker #briar the brothel owner #eden the hunter #zephyr the pirate #captain morgan and admiral nelson my one true bias 😩#harper the doctor #leighton the headteacher #quinn the mayor #crackship unlocked: valentines leighton and bailey #i remember the time i got drunk and shipped the rum bottle mascots

23 notes · View notes

honkygay · 1 month

Text

read it and weep, folks. We got cuddling detectives. double decker, soft bellied, snoozing, smooching, snug-as-a-bug detectives.