A chunk of wood was fed into the steam tractor burner.
Steam hissed out of the boiler as pressure built up. Moments later the tractor had built enough steam pressure to run the threshing machine.
Once the rumbling machine was rolling, three men pitched bundles of sheaves from a hay rack into the thresher’s jaws.
This was the way grain was separated from plants for decades until the early 1950s.
The old time threshing demonstration is a feature event at the annual Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village Museum threshing bee.
When the museum did its first threshing bee in 1969, most farm people had some experiences with the threshing machine.
Some of the older had memories of horse-drawn ploughs, seeders and reapers.
Today few people have had experiences with threshers and even fewer can recall using horse-drawn implements.
The various demonstrations were an educating moment for some of the people attending the bee.
“Imagine harvesting with that,” said one teenage farm youth as he watched the five-foot wide clipper combine cut oats.
The clipper could harvest three acres a day, compared with 100 acres by modern combines.
“The farmer was glad to have it,’’ said his father. “He didn’t have to have horses.”
Ryan from Minton was intrigued by the binder creating tied bundles of sheaves out of oats.
An old timer explained the pyramid style stooks had the grain heads at the top to stop mice from eating them and to protect heads from rain.
The museum’s oat crop was poor this year and a donation by local farmer Norbert Fries allowed the threshing demonstration.
One older museum member explained how farmers used to harvest crops too short to bundle and stook.
“They used a header that clipped the short plants and moved them into a big box. When the box was full, the farmer tipped it and created a pile resembling a giant loaf of bread.”
Demonstrations ranged from ploughing, reaping, binding to blacksmithing and rope making.
A young fellow called Walker had a four-foot long rope slung on his shoulder. Making the rope with the rope making device “was fun,’’ he said, with plans to use it on the pygmy fainting goats his family has.
The car-truck and tractor parades revived memories.
Seeing one older John Deere tractor Grant Babich remembered running that model with his father
“We were pulling a 15-foot discer. We could only go four miles an hour flat out. We had to work in the dark to keep up.”
The tractor pull ending each day drew large crowds.
Paid attendance was about 2,000. Winners off the 50-50 draws were Micheal Legault of Maple Creek and Penny Baseley of Spy Hill.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
