Straw stacks

Numerous articles in my Antique Power mag have had pictures of threshing operations. They usually show a mountain of straw that was blown out by the thresher, and some are very close to buildings. I wonder what became of them. Perhaps baled up with a stationary baler and shipped to cities for horse bedding?

Our dairy barn was built in the late 1800 or
early 1900's
There was a metal track in the gable that ran the
entire distance of the barn. There was a big hole
in the loft..

Some say they could use a gismo to lift loose hay
into the loft. Not sure.


In the 1950s my dad bought a JD square wire baler. He was busy baling hay for many people.
Not sure when square wire balers were invented.

About that time Dad also bought a JD combine.

So thrashing machines weren't used much after that.

We threshed all our grain (admittedly never more than 20 acres) until 2004, when we finally joined the
20th century with a pair of Allis all-crop combines. Most folks who threshed in this area did it the
same way we did - having the thresher inside the barn: The grain would be directed into a granary
room at one side of the barn, and the straw would be directed out back to a loose pile in the back of
the barn where it could be tossed down for bedding. One of the less-enjoyable jobs was building the
straw in the 'straw shed' (the back portion of the bank barn where the straw went). Back there with
pitch forks moving and building the stack so it wasn't just a random loose pile, with straw blowing
in your face and the thresher howling away beside you. Ughh... Add some allergies to the mix and it
made for a pretty bad day.

There's a pair of brothers not far from my father's who specialize in rebuilding binders & threshers
and shipping them to the Mennonites/Amish. They still thresh their grain. They'll blow the straw
stack right into the barn yard (we used to do this occasionally years ago) where the cattle loaf. The
cattle will pick at the straw stack over winter and it will be pretty much gone by spring. Definitely
not the greatest feed in the world, but it does significantly reduce the rate at which they eat hay.
These brothers (like us) don't spray and typically underseed their grains with hay, so there will be
some hay (mostly clover) in with the straw, which adds a little more incentive for the cattle to pick
through it at their leisure. Back in the day before spraying was more popular I suspect this was also
the case.

I suspect when threshing was done in an open field away from the animals they'd often load it onto a
wagon and bring it in loose, just like we used to do with loose hay - but without the benefit of a
hayloader hitched behind the wagon following the windrow. Or baled as you say with a stationary
baler. Once at a show I fed the straw blower straight into the auger of a square baler and had it
running while we threshed. It worked ok, but it was just a show and we weren't throwing sheaves fast
enough to give the baler a full load. Next year we just blew it in a pile and slowly ran the baler
through it once the show was over.

This post was edited by DanielW on 07/19/2023 at 05:21 am.

The 'gizmo' used to lift loose hay and straw was what dad called slings. It was made of ropes with wood spacers and a trip mechanism in the middle. A long trip rope was connected to the trip mechanism. In my young years amish had straw piles near their barns. Cattle and horses would browse on the pile making shaped kind of like a mushroom.

Most of the straw was used as bedding for horses and livestock, then spread across fields with the manure. If there was little or no livestock the excess was probably burned to dispose of it.

The sling had to be used with a hay loader weith a persion riding on the wagon to spread out the hay. It would take 2 slings to cover a normal wagon
on bed and the load had to be cut in half for the hay carier could handle it. Then there were the hay forks that most used instead of the slings that saved a lot of labor and could be used with a buckrake to haul the hay in from the field and the load was droped where the fork would come down on top of it with one person sticking the prongs and setting it so it would grab a load of hay. to be pulled tp the mow, same person doing the setting had control of a small half inch diameter rope to trip the for to dump the hay. I had both the sling and fork up to 6 years ago. Threashing stoped in 1945 when I was 2 years old and Dad bought a McCormick 42 combine and pulled it for several years with a 44 2N Ford on PTO

We threshed until 1970, mostly had the machine
setting on the barn floor. Grain went up the bucket
elevator on the thresher, and gravity sent it into the
grainary. The straw was blown on top of the hay mow.
If there was more straw than the barn could hold, the
blower pipe was directed out into the barn yard and a
straw stack was created. Straw from the stack was
used in the stable for cattle and pigs until it was gone,
then straw was retrieved from the mow. I have many
happy memories of swinging on ropes and dropping
into the loose straw up in the barn. It was a great time
and place to be a kid.

As a kid; I remember seeing frameworks made of cedar logs, straw was blown on top of the framework, and the area underneath was used as a
weather shelter by the cows. These were the remains of a bygone era.

Threshed grain around here was 90%+ oats (because of all the horses) which we threshed in August. Stacks were located right
next to the barn where they could be pitched in to be used for bedding. At my maternal grandparents place they had
constructed tunnels of wooden slats that the straw was blown over. Those tunnels provided the pigs housing for the winter.

Growing up in the 50's the lima beans were brought to a stationary thresher. By the time the beans were done, there would be this giant pile of bean
straw. My brother and I would play in. Mom would use a broom to sweep off the straw dust, before we were allowed in the house. The straw was later baled with a three wire stationary baler.
Not sure who Dad sold the bales too, maybe cattle people? For some extra money I would pick up beans that fell out of the threshing machine when they
were done. Dad gave me 10 cents a pound. The good old days. Stan

(quoted from post at 04:13:58 07/19/23) Numerous articles in my Antique Power mag have had pictures of threshing operations. They usually show a mountain of straw that was blown out by the thresher, and some are very close to buildings. I wonder what became of them. Perhaps baled up with a stationary baler and shipped to cities for horse bedding?

Click to expand...

A Midland Corporation print depicting that setting which reminds me of the classic Case print of a threshing yard.
Also a picture of the Dalrymple Bonanza farm. Great grandpa was a herdsman at Dalrymple. When mom would tell the story my young mind couldn t comprehend the aspect of herdsman. She then showed me a picture of a field of wheat with numerous teams hauling bundles to the stacks being built. There are 28 wheat stacks in the picture built prior to threshing and they stretch beyond the horizon. Mind you that these stacks were the means of protecting the crop until the threshing crew got set up. I can t say how long it would take to thresh out 28 stacks or for that matter a section of wheat with a 28-46 Red River Special run by an 80hp Case? Also keep in mind that some engines burnt straw as a fuel. Later Gas tractors eliminated that need. I would venture a guess that the straw was collected and stored either outside or inside a mow for use fairly close to home.

there were several ways devised to get the hay from the wagon to the mow. The 'gizmo' still hanging in our barn works like a grapple clamp. It went out over the wagon and dropped into the hay with the jaws open, then as it was lifted, the jaws closed and a clump of hay went into the barn where it was dropped whereever it need to go in the mow. There are small doors in the back of the barn for the blower pipe of the little Doylestown threshing machine to blow the straw directly into that part of the mow. Mind you, I'm much too young to have seen any of this stuff used.