A couple of days before writing, my son and I went to pick up a so-called elderly neighbour who wanted to go to a sale being held that evening.
It was not more than a half hour’s drive, which I found interesting, as our passenger lived a lifetime in the area, and he had a waiting comment on each and every farm that we passed.
Arrival was quick, as we drove past a long row of road-parked cars and a reasonably lengthy farm lane, which was lined bumper to bumper on both sides.
My son mumbled words to the effect of, “I hope you two are going to accent your limp, as I’m going to drive slowly through the crowd and park right up near the barn.”
We needn’t have worried; our guardian angel had left us a spot in the area approaching the aging barn’s gangway. Our shuffled limp, accented or not, matched the aged farm equipment that circled the yard.
Wham! I had not yet escaped from the clutching seatbelt when I glanced in the rear-view mirror and there it was – a well-aged, dust-covered, classic red McCormack threshing machine. Wow! Did that bring back a flood of memories to me? You can bet your bottom dollar that it did.
The whole yard was filled with, prior to the early 1950s, state-of-the-art farm equipment. Two fanning mills, a feed mixer, weigh scales, a hand-turned turnip pulper, a cream separator, and both single and twin furl horse-drawn ploughs. All of which, as a teen, I was well familiar with.
You could tell by the rusted and worn condition that all had been well used but reasonably looked after. There were also two ancient tractors of early 1950s vintage, which both started and purred like kittens. And yes, too, there was a rubber-tired wagon with wooden spokes. But my eyes kept returning each and every time back to the old threshing machine.
My first introduction to a threshing machine was perhaps in the years tailing the end of the Second World War. A neighbouring farmer, two farms down the road, had purchased one to custom thresh for all of his neighbours. So naturally, I was excited when said machine, late one evening, came lumbering into our lane pulled by a crank-started, puttering, spike-wheeled tractor.
George, the owner, muttered words to the effect that I could help him line it up the next morning. Little did he know that I knew nothing about what he was talking about.
But morning came early and so did George. Then after about 30 or more grease couplings were given a squirt of grease, the giant machine, with all its belts and pulleys, was positioned close into the barn’s foundation.
“So grain elevator pipes could reach the granary,” I was told. Then an exceptionally long drive belt was rolled out from its rolled-up holding position. If memory is correct, it must have been more than 30 feet long.
I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand the half twist in the long belt when it was tightened. “So it won’t jump off the pulleys when it is under load,” I was told, and without the half twist, I was further informed, “It would run the machine backwards.” Plain and simple answers.
To see the clean grain pouring from the elevator, the weed seeds falling into an attached bag, while the straw and chaff was blown into a stack in the yard, fascinated me to no end back then, and it still does now.
If you ever get the chance to see one in operation, do so! It’s an education in itself.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105