Old-time threshing

Cienna

Member
I think there are a few folks that are interested in some of these old pictures. This one measures 8" x 48", so I have to take two pictures of it, as it hangs on the wall. The picture was taken about 1912. My wife's dad is the tractor operator. It was on occasions like this that he met the woman to be his wife. The ladies make up the cooking crew.
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That sure is a nice picture. What is that holding the flat belt down about halfway between the engine and the threshing machine?
 
Looks like one of the workers sitting on the belt, has his leg crossed or is veteran on one leg another reason to sit. You can make out his overalls if you look close. chris
 
Things were a lot different back then. I remember my uncle had a heart attack before he got all his wood yarded out of the woods. He had a horse. All the neighbors got together on the weekend and finished it all up for him and hauled it to the mill. The women cooked dinner for everyone. All done gratis and no complaining.
 
My mom was in her late pregnacy with me when threshers came (1947.) I remember threshers when I lived on the farm as a young kid, maybe four or five. Lost my Hop-along-Cassidy spurs in the straw pile. Never found them. Great picture.

Larry
 
Can remember the thrashing crew coming to our farm a couple times when I was a little guy. Now I do the same thing at the local (Blanchard, MI) steam show. We raise the oats, borrow a binder, shock, load on wagons, and take them to the show. Usually end up forking most of it into the thrasher. Lot like work!
 
That's a great photo and thanks for taking the time to post it.

Looks to be a wooden Avery separator and possibly a return flue Minneapolis steam engine. I suspect the weather was good as it must of taken time out from their duties to stage everything for the photo.
 
BTDT - and don't ever want to get near a threshing machine again. I just shake my head when young folks get excited about a threshing machine.
 
That is a great picture, thanks for showing it.
I am old enough to remember the threshings but the power source was a W40 tractor on both neighborhood rigs. The one thing I see at threshings that was a no no here in my part of Ky is the haulers standing on top of the wheat bundles. They always stood on the floor of the wagons while forking the bundles into the thresher so as to not tramp the kernals from the wheat heads and lose them on the wagon bed. Possibly that was just a local thing though.
Joe
 
My mother & older sister started cooking in the "cook car" for her older brother's threshing crew when she was 14 years old; her sister was 16. Besides a hearty meal, they had to have pie for both dinner and supper.

The two girls slept in the cook car; the crew slept on top or under the bundle wagons, depending on the weather.

The older brothers were both drafted for WWI and let the threshing rig and Oil-Pull tractor go back to the finance company, so the girls were out of a job.
 
I remember those times. During WW11 got in on hauling bundles with horses. Hard work BUT a whole dollar an hour-12 to 14 hour days.
 

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