Essays
Threshing
Day
As many who read
this will know, I lived on a small, failing dairy farm in
west central Wisconsin from 1948, when I was born, until
1959, when my family moved to the slums of St. Paul’s East
Side… in the 1950s, farming was becoming increasingly
mechanized… the farms were getting larger and the more
successful farmers were buying larger and larger machines…
as the farms became businesses, and more like industrial
concerns, the smaller farmers could not compete and were
simply driven out of business… I remember the last of the
horses from the very early 1950s but after the War, horses
were very quickly leaving the rural landscape, at least work
horses…
My dad owned an old John Deere tractor… this was a small
tractor, a Model B… the Model A was much larger and my dad’s
cousin Erick who lived just down the road had two Model A’s…
Carlin Lund who lived between our farm and Erick’s farm had
a Farmall, which was a much more modern looking and seeming
machine… the Farmall was big and red with the engine
enclosed in part by a streamlined gas tank at the top… and
had a regular engine instead of the old two cylinder John
Deere so, it hummed like a car instead of having the
distinctive John Deere “putt putt” sound… it also had a
battery and electric starter and a foot clutch like a car…
the John Deeres that I was familiar with had a lever to the
right of the steering wheel that was the clutch and
connected to an open pulley just in front of the axels for
the massive drive wheels… inside the pulley was the clutch
mechanism… on the other side of the engine, just opposite of
the pulley, was a flywheel, a big heavy cast iron wheel that
spun as the two cylinder engine putt putted along… to start
the engine, one would manually give the flywheel a spin… you
did this by just opening the throttle a bit and grabbing the
wheel and spinning it… for a grown man, this was not hard
but as 8 and 9 year old children, my brother and I had to
rear back and spin with all our might to turn over the
engine and get the thing to start…
On Erick’s Model As, there were pit-cocks, little valves,
that you had to open before attempting to spin the flywheel…
the pit-cocks would relieve the back pressure in the
cylinder so that one could turn the flywheel… otherwise, the
compression of the big engine was so strong that the
flywheel was virtually impossible to turn, even for a grown
man…
Anyway, my brother and I loved to drive the tractor… it had
three gears, none of which was very fast and to drive it,
you would select your gear, then engage the clutch and
control the speed with a hand operated throttle which was
where the turn signal lever is on a modern car… you could
not change gears without stopping… Erick’s Model A’s had
what my dad called a “road gear” which was an extra fast
gear for driving on the road… my brother and I loved to
drive Erick’s big tractors but, I was scared of the road
gear… it seemed to fast…
We were always told to stay clear of the big back tires of
the tractor… the driving wheels as they were very dangerous
and that was probably good advice… but, we climbed all over
the tractor and drove it whenever we got the chance… and by
the time I left the farm at age 11, I was an excellent
tractor driver… could back up a four wheel hay wagon… quite
a tricky maneuver… and chose the correct speed and correct
gears for the job whether it was pulling the manure spreader
or cultivating corn… in those days, herbicides were only
just beginning to be introduced and so the tractor was used
to cultivate the corn… there was a mechanism called a
“cultivator” that attached to the tractor and had shovels or
teeth that dug into the ground… this was set up so that the
teeth went between the rows of corn and driving across the
field the teeth would dig up the soil, digging up any weeds
that were growing between the rows… when the tractor reached
the end of a pass across a field, the driver would reach to
the side and push down a mechanical lever that would raise
the teeth up out of the ground, so you could turn the
tractor and start a pass back in the opposite direction on
the next set of rows… for a grown man, throwing this lever
was not too difficult, but for us 8 and 9 year olds, it was
impossible from the driver’s seat… so one of us would drive
the tractor and the other would throw the lever… standing
perched on the hitch and the axel of the tractor… we loved
cultivating corn and took turns driving the tractor and
operating the lever…
The crops we raised were oats, barley and corn (maize)… in
the very middle of summer, the oats and barley would be ripe
and it would be time to harvest… my dad was kind of contrary
and did not like the mechanized farming that was coming in
where the harvest was done by a combine… instead of the old
way using a threshing machine… in our area, the combine was
new and only the biggest, richest farmers had them, but by
1959, everyone used a combine and the threshing machines
were all parked in back fields, where they can still be seen
today, rusting away…
Threshing time was great fun and the most exciting time of
the year for me… Old Man Torgeson up the road had an old
wooden threshing machine… the threshing machine was
stationary and was run by a belt from the pulley of a big
tractor… to our young eyes, the threshing machine was huge
and made an enormous racket… we were told to stay far away
from the belt that ran from the tractor to the threshing
machine and from the labyrinth of belts on the side of the
huge machine as those belts were very very dangerous… in
fact, Old Man Torgeson was missing a few fingers on one hand
from and accident involving the belts of the threshing
machine… the old guy’s job was to run the threshing machine
and I can see him with his striped overalls and a big oil
can in his crippled hand… walking around the huge roaring
machine adjusting here and oiling there…
The threshing machine worked on bundles of grain that were
tossed onto a conveyor chain that ran into the machine… the
hay wagons would be piled with grain bundles and farmers
with pitchforks would throw the bundles from the wagon to
the conveyor chute… inside the machine, vibrating screens
separated the grain from the straw… the grain fell through
the screens and the straw was sucked into a huge fan that
blew it out of a pipe… the grain was carried by a conveyor
to another pipe with an auger that would put it into a
storage bin… the storage bin would be emptied into a grain
wagon that would haul the grain to the farm granary where an
elevator would carry the grain up through an upper window
where the gain would fall onto a metal trough that would
direct it into the proper grain storage bin…
Several farmers would work together on a threshing crew
going from farm to farm until all the grain was threshed… in
our case, I remember the crew being my dad, his cousin
Erick, Carlin Lund and the Torgesons… you could tell when it
was time to thresh the grain because the grain was dry and
golden brown… about a week before threshing day, the
individual farmer would go over his own field with a machine
called a grain binder… the grain binder was an old horse
drawn machine with the wooden tongue cut short and with a
metal hitch so it could be hitched to the back of the
tractor… this machine was operated by a huge steal driving
wheel so as the machine was pulled forward, the gears and
chains connected to the driving wheel would operate the
moving parts… the grain was cut by a toothed sickle that
moved back and forth… the grain then fell onto a canvas
conveyor belt and was carried into the machine where it was
bundled into sheaves and each sheave was automatically tied
with a piece of twine and the sheave, which we called a
“bundle,” was dropped on the ground… when the whole field
was done, the farmer had to go over the field by hand,
picking up the bundles and stacking them in tents of seven
bundles per tent to get the grain up off the ground so air
could get at it so it could dry… the little tents of grain
bundles were called “shocks” and that job was called
“shocking grain…”
Then on the day before threshing day, Old Man Torgeson would
bring his threshing machine to the farm and set it up with a
belt from the pulley of the big tractor to run the machine…
one of his sons had a Ford tractor, which was low to the
ground and had fenders, and looked to us, much more like a
car than the other tractors… this son used the Ford tractor
to haul the grain wagon; hauling the grain from the
threshing machine to the granary… another farmer would
handle the straw that blew out of a large pipe at the back
end of the threshing machine… he would use a big fork and
move the pipe around to arrange the straw into a pile… in
those days, every farm had a straw pile behind the barn… the
straw was used for bedding for the cows and always there
would be various lumps in the area from where old straw
piles had been… old straw piles were a great place to plant
musk melons… and huge bull thistles loved to grow in old
straw piles…
The other farmers would take their hay wagons and drive
around the field from grain shock to grain shock… a farmer
on the ground with a three tined pitchfork would spear the
grain bundles and toss them up to the guy on the hay wagon
who would stack them into a load… a third farmer, often a
kid, would drive the tractor… piling the load so the bundles
would not fall off the wagon as the pile got higher was
pretty tricky and both of the wagon jobs were heavy and hard
work requiring the strength of a grown man… or a big strong
kid… my brother would sometimes throw the bundles up on the
wagon to my dad while I drove the tractor but more often two
of the men would handle those jobs and we would just drive
the tractor… our favorite thing to do was to ride in the
grain wagon… which was always full of crickets and beetles…
also, threshing time was always the time that the little
black raspberries we called “black caps” were ripe and they
grew all over in the fence rows, we would steal away
whenever we could to pick a handful of black caps to eat… a
little burst of sweet juicy flavor in the heat and dust of
threshing…
On threshing day, the farm wife or in Erick’s case, his
mother, would get all of her female friends and relatives
together and they would cook and make mountains of food…
pies and cakes, potatoes and fried chicken or roast beef…
cookies, sandwiches for lunch, Kool-Aid and soda for the
kids, coffee and beer for the men… grandma was there and in
the heat of summer, with the wood stove going full blast, I
always remember the women as looking warm and red in the
face… but the food was amazing… early in the morning, all
the farmers would do their own chores and then have
breakfast and head for the farm where the threshing machine
had been set up the day before… they would start loading and
threshing and around ten a.m. would take a break for lunch…
the women and kids would bring lunch to the men in the
fields and around the threshing machine… lunch was
sandwiches made not with ordinary homemade bread but with
fancy Wonderbread from the store… homemade cookies and
Kool-Aid or coffee to drink… for the men, doing that hard
hot heavy dusty work, it was really nice to sit down with a
sandwich, a cookie and a cup of coffee… talk a bit… I
remember laughing and joking… as the farmers were a jolly
enough bunch… a few risqué comments in Norwegian… and after
maybe half an hour, it was back to work… then what we called
“dinner” was served at noon… that would be a big meal of
meat and potatoes with vegetable casseroles and pie and cake
for desert… and plenty of coffee about half diluted with
heavy cream…
After dinner, the men would sit around for a while talking
and smoking and drinking beer… then it was back to work
until about three p.m. when there would be another lunch,
more sandwiches, cookies and coffee and then back to work
until about 6 when everybody would leave to go home and do
their evening chores… after which they would have a meal
that we called “Supper…” funny but with all that food those
men were not fat… in fact, they were all trim and pretty fit
from the hours of hard exercise… and faces and arms were
brown from the sun… my brother and I liked to spend the
summer without a shirt so, after the first week or so of
sunburn, by threshing time, our pale Norwegian skin was very
brown and we could be out in the sun all day without being
burned…
I was always sad to see threshing end… it usually lasted
only two or three days, a day and a half of actual threshing
and then another half day each for setting up and taking
down the machine… I remember the Torgesons heading down the
barnyard driveway… one son driving the tractor with the hay
wagon, followed by the son with the Ford tractor and the
grain wagon, followed by the old man driving the big tractor
pulling the old threshing machine…
All of this was done away with by the introduction in the
1950s to that area of Wisconsin, of the combine… the combine
then was much like the machine in use today only not as big
as the modern version… but, it was a machine that drove
across the field that was operated by one man and did the
whole operation at once, cutting and threshing the grain and
leaving a trail of straw on the field… well, there is always
something lost with progress… so what the farmers gained in
efficiency was paid for dearly in the loss of the one really
social and fun time I remember from the farm… threshing
time… so few of us anymore really know the pleasure of hard
work… of using our strength and piling a wagon high with
bundles that will hold together for the drive to the
threshing machine… of the taste of a blackberry or a creamy
cup of coffee when it feels good just to sit for a minute
and rest aching arms and backs… of a hard day spent over a
hot cook stove turning raw materials into an amazing amount
of wonderful food… I had the good fortune to see just the
tail end of farming before it became a truly mechanical and
industrial enterprise carried out by a giant robot operated
by a hired hand listening to the radio in an air-conditioned
cabin… twenty feet up from the field of stubble…
