-Bringing in the Sheaves...

Before the combine it was amazingly difficult and labour intensive to get a bushel of grain into the bin, even after you'd grown it.
First you went over the field with a binder which cut the grain and tied it into bundles or sheaves which it dropped all over the field, apparently at random. If the weather was dry after that it was time to walk over the fields collecting these bundles into piles of six or eight and stand them on end with the heads leaning against each other in stooks to dry and wait for threshing time. Or for a big enough wind to blow them over so you could start again.
The threshing was done by a neighbour who had a separator and a flywheel John Deere for power. He would set up by the granary near the creek, which was pretty central, while the bundle racks and tractors were loading stooks in the field. There was a driver and a loader for each rack and one or two field spikers armed with pitchforks, who would go where they were needed. This was the most physical job because the loader would load the bottom part of the rack. When he couldn't throw bundles on top he would climb up to build the load (so it wouldn't tip over or slide off on the ride to the separator) while the spiker tossed from the ground. The loader got a break while heading for the separator but the spiker generally found another rack ready for him when the last one rolled away.
At the separator the driver would pull up beside the feeder chute, then climb up on the load to help the loader feed the separator with bundles at a steady rate. This was important, too many bundles at once and it would plug, or slow down too much for effective separation, too few and it would over rev the tractor and shake things up and the operator would say appropriate words. It was also important to feed the bundles heads first so the band cutters and rakers would work effectively. Probably more than one bundle went in stems first but I shudder to think what would have happened if one got in sideways.

Feeding the separator (aka threshing machine), some barley sheaves.

That's Bufflehead at eighteen on the left, 165 pounds of pure muscle, even looks like he knows what he's doing. I think this picture was taken the last time threshing was done on the farm, Uncle Fred got a pull-behind combine the next year.


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