wheat tthrashing memories

[Polly]

 8) 8) 8)  you all got me thinking about hog killing and it brought back memories of combing wheat dad would hook three horses to an old combine which would cut the wheat and tie it in bundles after it was all cut we would go back and take pitch forks and put the bundles in a shock or pile then we would take a horse drawn wagon and haul to the barn and store until the thrashman mch would come about a couple weeks later their would be a steamed powered tractor come around pulling the mch he would take each farm as he came to it the men in whole neighbord would work togather the thrashman mch would seperate the grain from the straw and put the grain in bags and dad would haul the wheat to the local mill where he would sell some and save some for flour the mill would store dads flour until mom needed it and dad would go to town and pick up one sack the name on the sack from the mill read bracken bell flour does anyone else rember wheat thrashing time  8) 8) 8) :D :D

[Larry]

Run the combine bout 1st of July and nothing to it.  But Granddaddy and his nine brothers homesteaded out in Colorado.  I can remember him and dad talking about harvest.  They would shock up the wheat and wait for the thrasherman with his steam powered thresher.  Grandma would talk about fixing lunch for up to twenty during the harvest and than they would go to the next farm.  Usually the weather would be a little on the cool side and under each shock of wheat there would be a rattler.  Dad said they would just kick the snake off to the side and continue with there business...course this was 80 years ago and I wasn't around to verify the truthfulness of this tail. ;D

Might be able to tell ya some tales bout hog killing up in hog scald hollar sometime...much more exciting than the tales of wheat harvest. ;D

[Polly]

 8) 8) 8)   you got any pork rines   cracklens   they sure would be good  8) 8) :D :D

[Robert R]

Memories?  Molly and Ginger pulled the binder last season and helped pulling the wagon with shocks to the thrasher.  They didn't work all that great in a four-horse hitch just cause they weren't used to it.  So they got demoted to hauling off the straw on a smaller wagon to the stationery baler.  Y'all make me feel old and I'm only 38!!  Better go get some grits.  Memories--sheesh.  Wake up and smell the 1900s before you get left behind the times.  Before you know it, it will be a whole new century.

[PineNut]

I didn't grow up in wheat country but we did trash peanuts. The peanuts would be plowed up and then it was manual labor to pick them up and place them on a stack. After they had dried, the stack was taken to the thresher, which picked the peanuts from the vines. The peanuts were bagged and the vines were bailed up for hay. No the thresher was not powered by steam but by a John Deere Model A tractor.

My great uncle in Texas told me about the steam power thresher and the events surrounding the threshing activities. It sounded interesting but like the peanuts, also a lot of manual labor. 

[beenthere]

I was fortunate to be part of an oat threshing crew, with the binder, the shocking, loading the wagons, and then getting unloaded at the threshing machine. Oat dust bothered me real bad, but still the best part was the food the ladies prepared for the noon meal. Never seen anything like it. I could hardly breathe from the oat allergy, but still liked the food and the whole affair. Only one farmer did we have a steam engine to run the thresher. This was in the early 50's, like '52 -'54.  Farmers just kept their teams to participate in the threshing crew (central Iowa it was). Good times. 

[Don_Papenburg]

I never did that .  My dad said that the corn crib on my farm was built after the 1921  oat threashing was done .  A spaerk from the steam engine set the straw stack on fire and the wind from the east spred the fire to several small buildings an then the crib that had the new crop of freshly threashed oats stored within. 
   
  I do remember  the 12A combine   and the MM UniHarvester then the JD45s

The closest  thing I got to a threashing ring was shelling corn   and  baling hay. Some good food there ,but times were changing some of the wives had city jobs and we would go to a resturant  to eat .   :(

[Bro. Noble]

We used to thrash till I got tired of it 20 or 30 years ago.  Everyone talked about how much they enjoyed coming to help and watching the steam engine etc.  but where were they when the ground had to be worked, the grain planted and bound and shocked and hauled?  We still have all the old machinery and I suppose could do it again if the mice havn't got to the binder canvasses and I can remember where I but the blocks for the stationary baler,  and the seperator belts havn't rotted,  and we weld up the leaky rivits in the engine boiler,  and we can find someone to belt up the engine to the seperator.  I could just barly handle that when I was much younger and a rusty engineer will throw it off a dozen times before he gets the DanG thing going.  I'm starting to remember why we stopped thrashing :D :D 

[low_48]

Don't even mention oats dust, I'm starting to itch just thinking of it. My cousin almost died in an oats bin. He was turning blue when they brought him out, but my uncle got him started breathing okay. I too am a little too young ( 54) for the threshing work. I sure did my share baling square bales and shelling corn. A penny a bale was the going rate for working in the barn. It was a long day to make $10. Always loved it when wheat straw time came around. EASY MONEY!!!! The first combines I remember were pull-type and I think they had 7' or 8' heads on them with canvas drapers to take the wheat into the machine. We still used pickups with wood boxes on them to haul the grain into the elevator. That was just at the end of the time when you could order a pickup without a bed. My Dad worked at the lumber yard when he was younger making truck beds. Not exactly The Fisher Body Works :D
We always had the great meals when we got together with the neighbors for this type of work. In fact, we always ate 5 times a day on the farm. Stopped at 9:30 AM and 3:00PM for lunches, of course dinner was at noon, and supper was at 5:30-6:00. Sometimes supper was in the field as well, if rain was coming.
I always thought my Dad had seem so much change in his life, seems the same for me now. Who would have guessed we would be talking this way
Thanks for letting me go down that memory lane a little!!! Oh by the way, it was a long bicycle ride to get to a tree that wasn't on someones yard. I would have had to go about 3 miles to get to the creek to see a 100' wide stip of trees, and those were mostly cottonwood. Always wondered where those telephone poles came from ???

[Steve]

Here is a link to theThreshing Bee.

It is our one big thing here. There is a 150 year history of dry land wheat farming here.

That is the most current site I could find. It is happening again this year though. August 13th and 14th I think.

Steve

I took a lot of pictures last year.