Threshing Days

Kids love days with lots of activities going on, and some of the most active on the Baird farm in the 1930s were at threshing time (we pronounced it “thrashing.”) This was a big operation that required the combined efforts of at least a dozen men, so Dad and neighboring farmers would form a threshing “ring” and hire a custom thresher to bring in his big machine at the appropriate time—usually about the middle of July. Then all the farmers would work together on one farm after another until all the oats and wheat in the area had been threshed.

Prior to the threshing the ripened wheat and oats had been cut with a “binder”—a reaping machine that cut the grain stalks close to the ground then tied an “armful” of stalks into a so-called “bundle.” The bundles would drop into a carrier, which the person operating the binder would trip at frequent set intervals. These bundles were then stacked by hand into “shocks” of five or six bundles with one bundle spread out over the top to give some protection from the weather. Our binder was designed to be pulled by a team of horses, but Dad had cut the tongue to a stub and rigged it to be pulled by the tractor. Most of the weight was on a large, cleated “bull wheel,” which was geared to run the machinery of the binder. I can well remember running the binder with Dad driving the tractor and John and Charlie Winters shocking. If any problem came up I would tug on a string tied to Dad’s arm, since my yelling couldn’t be heard over the sound of the tractor.

A few days after we had finished cutting and shocking the oats and wheat it would be our turn for threshing. My, what excitement for the kids! Dad and the older boys would be up extra early to get the farm chores done early and have a couple of hayrack loads of bundles of oats in by the time neighbors started arriving by about 7 o’clock. (They’d have done their own farm chores, had breakfast and driven a team of horses and a hayrack to our place by that time.) Altogether, there would be five or six two-man teams with a hayrack—a flatbed farm wagon that could hold a huge load of hay or straw—that would bring in loads of bundles from the field. They would then pitch the bundles one at a time into the throat of the thresher—also called a “separator” for separating grain from straw—and straw would be blown out one end of the threshing machine and grain would come out of a spout at the other end. This seems a pretty crude operation in this day and age, but it was rather “high-tech” in the thirties. (“Sure beats cutting grain with a scythe and beating out the kernels with a flail on the barn floor like they did in the old days.”)

The hardest job went to the men who handled the grain wagons. They had to scoop whole wagon-loads of grain into bins. This was a big job. Two men took turns scooping, but I remember Dad sweating profusely as he took his turn scooping overhead. The easiest job was the water-boy. He took jugs of cool water out to the fields to quench the thirst of the workers. He had to make the rounds of all concerned about every half hour. One of my early memories is of being water-boy, driving a buggy drawn by “Fanny,” our riding horse. My very first earned cash money was from being water-boy at Lindley’s on the Garman farm. Mr. Lindley gave me fifty cents for working all day—I thought I had hit the jackpot and was really rich! (At a time when candy bars and Cokes were a nickel and a restaurant meal was 30 or 40 cents, fifty cents was worth a lot to a kid!)

I took my water-boy job seriously and made it a point to pump water at the windmill until it ran cool before filling the jug with water--except once. That hot July day Mother asked me to pick green beans while I was waiting between trips and this took a little longer than I had expected. Since I was now running late, I just added water to what was left over from the last round and hurried out to the field. Everything seemed OK until I got to the last man, Charlie Winters, who took a big gulp, then spit it out and exclaimed, “Warm as piss!” I was embarrassed and shocked; I had never before heard an adult talk like that. I promised to hurry back with fresh, cool water--and I did.

The highlight of the threshing day was a big dinner—the noontime meal. Here is Mother’s entry in her diary for July 16, 1931: “All day threshing. 13 acres of oats and a few loads on the north field. The 13 acres averaged 55 bushels per acre. They had trouble with both the separator and tractor in the morning. Edith (Marshall), Mrs. Burrows and Mrs. Winters helped with dinner. We got along fine. There were 24 for dinner including cooks and children; 18 men. Boys hauled water. We had pork steak, gravy, noodles, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, escalloped oysters, potato salad, coleslaw, pork and beans, prunes, peaches, cheese, cottage pudding with sauce and iced tea.”

In reading this listing of food served, I am surprised that pie wasn’t one of the desserts. The Yellow Transparent apples would usually ripen by about mid-July and we would have lots of apple pie at that time. LeRoy Taylor, a member of the treshing ring, loved pie and was always a great joker. At dessert time he would ask, “Would you have any apple-core pie?” One year the ladies got set up for him and actually baked a pie made of apple cores. When LeRoy made his usual joking request, they served him a big piece of apple core pie. He thanked them kindly, but decided he really wasn’t hungry anymore after such a big meal—and he never again asked for apple-core pie!

Usually the straw from the threshing machine was blown onto a straw stack in the pasture, not far from the barn, that the cows would munch on during the cold months. However, one year Dad decided to make a straw shed. We cut poles from the timber for posts and put fence wire around the sides and across the top to lay out a room that was about twelve feet square. There was a fairly narrow entrance enclosure. When straw was blown all over the sides and top there was a big igloo-shaped straw shed that was so well insulated that it was quite warm in winter. Dad kept hogs in it.

By the end of World War II the use of threshing machines had almost disappeared, having been replaced by grain combines. Combines (so named because they combine the cutting and threshing of the grain in one operation) are much more efficient and save many hours of hard labor, but they’re not nearly as exciting or fun for kids. Even today I get excited when I am lucky enough to see a threshing scene in Amish country or attend an old-time threshing demonstration.