Threshing day was as much a social event as it was work
By Kyle Valentini
August 5, 2013
373
Summary: A visit to an old-fashioned threshing day is inspirational and proves there is more to farming than hard work.
If you think gardening is difficult, try farming. I had the privilege of attending an old-fashioned threshing day at Wholesome Valley Farm just outside of Wilmot last week. What a day. What an incredible day.
While some farmers still use the old-fashioned threshing machines of years past, most have moved on to more modern methods that eliminate the one aspect of the day-long event that makes it so worthwhile, the social aspect.
Hours of work followed by a delicious meal that in itself is a huge endeavor for the women and girls in the community. Threshing day was much more than hard work. It was a time for people of all ages to share each others company.
Threshing day was a big deal for farming communities. Typically, one farmer owned the machine and other farmers in the community would rely on him to bring the machine to the farm where they could use it to separate the grain from the stalk.
Before threshing begins, bundles of grain, and in this case oats, must be made into shocks. It takes seven bundles to make a shock. Aden Keim, who operates Wholesome Valley Farm, said his dad always told him to make the shock so a rabbit could run through it.
A 1929 thresher marked Gross Bros.; Gibsonburg, Ohio was waiting in the pasture when we arrived. It would be powered by a vintage diesel tractor engine and the whole contraption was large and a bit intimidating.
In the first stage of threshing, bundles of grain and straw are pitched into the feeder. A rapidly rotating set of blades visible at the end of the feeder, tears the bundles apart, breaking the twine and snapping the heads from the straw. They beat the straw and heads onto a grooved plate, knocking kernels from the heads without crushing them. The straw then passes over a straw rack that removes most of the straw from the kernels. Whatever passes through falls onto a series of progressively smaller shaking screens, removing most of the remaining straw and chaff from the kernels.
The cleaner kernels that passed through the last screen are moved over a stream of air that blows the remaining straw and chaff away. The cleaned kernels fall into a hopper where they will hauled away and stored for later use.
As difficult and labor intensive is the building of shocks and feeding the bundles into a thresher, it is far easier than it was prior to the invention of the mechanized process. Invented in 1784 by a Scottish mechanical engineer, the thresher took the place of flails, handheld tools that were used to beat the grains from their stalks.
While fewer and fewer Amish farmers have an annual threshing day and nine out of ten never entering agriculture at all. I was reminded by a young, albeit wise Amish farmer that for each Amish family that leaves agriculture behind as a means of making a living, an urban family plants a garden and raises chickens in their backyard even to the chagrin of their neighbors with lawns made uniformly green by chemicals.
Another family turns a vacant city lot into a community garden. A young entrepreneur provides locally sourced fresh produce, meat and dairy products to subscribers of a community supported agriculture (CSA) venture, and Wholesome Valley Farm provides a retail outlet for local farmers and producers as well as an educational resource for people who want to learn more about healthy food and the people who provide it.