Thrashing Time

Yesterday I had occasion to drive to Bellingham. It was a hot day and as I drove through the Skagit Valley I pulled off the freeway and rolled down the windows to observe the grain harvesting operation in a couple of the fields.

Farmers today use combines to harvest grain. It is an efficient operation where one man drives the combine and one or two more drive trucks to haul the clean grain to storage. The cabs of the trucks and combine are air conditioned so even though it is a tedious job it isn't so uncomfortable and the operators can listen to their favorite music or converse with friends via cell phone. In my truck I could feel the hot air, breathe the dust and smell the smells of harvesting wheat in summer but in their air conditioned cocoons those operators were just doing another job.

Seeing those combines working the fields reminded me of the late forties when things were a little different in the grain harvesting business on Grandpa's family farm there on Orcas island.

 As the wheat ripened in August we would hook the old Farmall tractor to the binder and head for the field.

From the days of the hand sickle to the cradle scythe, harvesting was a labor intensive operation. They say a good day for a skilled man using a cradle scythe was three acres. Another person would gather the cut stalks and tie them into sheaves and another would stack five to seven sheaves into a shock for drying. With the development of the binder into the modern machine I pulled, we could cut and tie at least ten times as much in one day.

Since the binder was built to be pulled by a team of horses it had a long tongue and a spring-mounted seat for the driver operator. The cutting bar was on the left with a rotating wheel of wooden bars above. The cutter would cut the wheat, the bars would knock the stalks back onto a canvas carrier and the cut stalks would be carried across the bed and up a forty-five degree slope and dumped into the bin to be tied. The bundles would be wrapped with sisal twine (binder twine), knotted and dumped out onto a carrier on the right side. The carrier was composed of slightly curved metal bars so when enough sheaves had accumulated Grandma would drop the carrier and the sheaves would be swept off by the ground.

Thanks here to my sister, Retha, who, after reading my last post, reminded me that whenever she left the house, Grandma wore rubber knee boots because she was afraid of snakes. Never mind that we don't have poisonous snakes here, she worried so much about them she wore those uncomfortable boots. Incidentally, I've always admired the Japanese name where they are called "nagagutsu" literally translated as long (nagai) shoes (kutsu).

Grandpa bought ankle-high black leather shoes that had hooks on the uppers. He would wear them to town and to dances then as they got older he would wear them around the farm. On the other end he always wore a hat. Again, when it was new it was for town and other social functions and when older it was a permanent fixture on his head. His face and neck were suntanned a deep brown but from his eyebrows up his skin was white.

Of course, back then we never wore safety glasses, hard hats, safety boots or ear protection. It seems like I wore an old pair of tennis shoes. We didn't know any better. While we use safety precautions today for most things, people (especially younger) seem to forget that loud sounds can permanently damage the audio nerves.

It was there on the farm that I learned to tie the first real knot since I learned to tie my shoe laces. The spools of binder twine were mounted on two spindles. One was being fed into the machine and the other was ready to go but the end of one spool had to be tied to the beginning of the second so the operation would be endless. The knot used to tie the twine together was the square knot and it was important because if an inexperienced hand tied a granny knot the knot would come untied in the binder and the knotting mechanism would have to be re-threaded. That was a time consuming process so NO mistakes allowed.

Later Grandpa or some of us would work the field to stack four sheaves cut side down with one or two more laid across the top. After drying for a few days they were ready to be transported to the threshing machine, or "thrashin' machine" as we knew it.

Every day Grandpa would carry a gallon jug of well water to the field, place it in the shade of a shock of hay or wheat and we'd have a drink once in awhile. For lunch we had a sandwich prepared by Grandma earlier that morning. No bottled water or refrigerated coolers for us. The work was hot and dusty but since we didn't have contrasting air conditioned spaces we didn't mind.

After the wheat had dried it was thrashing time.

A day or two before the appointed day we would load available wagons and the truck with the sheaves from the fields then early on thrashin' day a couple more old flatbed farm trucks would arrive and head for the fields to load.

Grandpa would fire up the old Caterpiller tractor, twist the drive belt once, stretch it between the pulley on the back of the Cat and the bull wheel on the thrashing machine, draw it taut and engage the pulley. The Cat would groan, slow then return to speed. The wheels and pitman rods on the thrashing machine would come up to speed and the workers would come up to speed.

A loaded truck or trailer would be jockeyed into position alongside the gaping maw of the thresher with its chomping teeth designed to break up the sheaves. Two men unloaded the wheat then that vehicle was driven to the field to be reloaded by the field crew and eventually driven back to the thresher to feed that hungry machine.

Straw and chaff passed through the machine and were blown out the pipe on the back onto what became a huge pile of straw. The clean wheat grains sifted down through the various screens and were lifted by an auger then dumped into the bag chute. The bag chute terminated in a double gunny sack holder with a diverter lever. As each bag filled the man stationed there threw the diverter lever, tripped the holder rod so its teeth released the full bag, replaced it with an empty and quickly sewed the bag shut with a bag needle and cotton twine. By that time the second bag would be almost full and he would go through the routine again.

When I was in Vietnam last year I saw this threshing crew using a foot-powered  machine. A basket and
the  ambient breeze were used to winnow the chaff from the grains of rice. 

The size of the crew varied but usually consisted of two boys driving vehicles, two men in the field pitching sheaves onto the vehicle and one stacking them, two men feeding the machine, one bagger and one helper preparing bags and reloading needles, one man toting and stacking full sacks and one relief man to spell off the workers as the need arose. The machine and the workers worked straight through until noon.

Old threshing machine similar to the one Grandpa had. Sheaves were fed in on the left, straw blew out
the right and grain was bagged on the  other side (out of view here) of the machine. 

While the work in the fields was going full bore the work in the kitchen was going just as fast. The women and older girls had been working since breakfast getting ready with food "enough to feed a thrashin' crew" as we said in those days. 

There would be bread and butter, a roast or two, fried chicken, potatoes with gravy, maybe some vegetables from Grandma's garden and pies and cakes along with cold milk and hot coffee. Plenty of calories but no overweight people because the hard work burned up all those calories.

Back to the field the machines were fired up again and more grain waited to be threshed. 

In the evening most of the crew would go home, we would help Grandpa do chores and we finally got to eat again. There at my place at supper would be a bright fifty cent piece, my wages for the day. I was very proud of earning that money.

I say most of the crew went home. Smith was the exception. He was Grandpa's hired hand. He would show up at the farm in the late spring, stay all summer and then disappear in the fall. He said his name was Smith. He got room and board and Grandpa may have paid him something at the end of the summer. Today it would be almost impossible to be a "Smith" since we require endless paperwork and identifiers of both employers and employees. Well, except illegal aliens. I guess one of those could pass as a "Smith" with a disreputable employer.  

After dinner there was no TV, video games, personal music piped straight to eardrums, Facebook or other such diversions since none of those yet existed. Well, TV had been invented but was unknown at that time on the Island. 

Not that we had time in any case since we soon hit our beds, hayseeds, dust, sweat and all. Back then baths were few and far between. More likely we would make a trip to the lake or the saltwater beach on Sunday to wash off the accumulated grime.

Work, eat and sleep was the general rule. Overall, I think it made me a better person.