[AT] More from Aunt Charlotte's book (Fanning mill)

[pga2 at hot1.net]

Walt,
I watched the History Channel the other day and they had a program on
about Mount Vernon. George Washington built a similar thing using a
slatted floor and horses to thresh his wheat. The wheat would fall through
the gaps between the floorboards to the level below where it was gathered
and then 3winnowed from the chaff in a similar way to what your Great Aunt
described.
The main difference was that the horses used were trained specifically for
this job and would trot on command.

Phil

> Farmers helped each other with the threshing as well as the cutting of
> the  grain and sometimes it was well into the winter before everyone's
> grain would be  stored away in sacks or bins.A few days before threshing
> was to start, the  farmers would round up there wild horses. When
> everything was ready at the farm  where the work was to begin, forty or
> fifty of the wild horses would be driven  there and corralled in a pen
> that opened to the threshing floor.
>
>   Our threshing floor was not really a floor at all, but just a smooth,
> level
> bit of hard ground with a high wall around it. Gates opened from it to a
>  couple of corrals. The wild horses were driven into one of these pens
> and kept  there till the floor had been covered to a depth of three or
> four feet with the  loose bundles of grain. Then fifteen or twenty of
> the horses would be driven  onto it. They were exactly as wild as
> antelopes. The loose straw under foot and  men and boys hollering and
> waving their hats, frightened the imprisoned  animals into the wildest
> panic. Back and forth and round and round they would  plunge. when their
> speed would slacken, men with long whips would urge them on and  on till
> flakes of foam and sweat would drip from their flanks. Then they would
> be turned into the empty corral and men would go onto the threshing
> floor and  turn the straw, or if the grain had been shattered easily,
> the straw would be  thrown out and new bundles would be spread on the
> floor and fresh horses would  be turned in. The threshing at each farm
> might last for a week or two. It was  a wonderful time for us children.
> The men, themselves, seemed to enjoy it.
>
>   And so the threshing would go on at each farm in its turn till it was
> all
> done. Then the herd of jaded and now thoroughly broken horses would be
> divided  and taken home to be ridden or worked by their owners.
>
>   But that did not finish the harvest. At our house there would be maybe
> a
> thousand bushels of grain on the threshing floor and as many bushels, or
> more of  chaff and broken straw. Separating the grain from the chaff was
> a tedious  task. It was usually done by the farmers themselves. A high
> platform would be  built in a place well exposed to the wind. Sacks of
> the grain would be carried up  to a man who stood on the platform, then
> he would pour it slowly into the  sweep of the wind. The heavier grain
> falling neat and clean in a pile at the base  of the platform, while the
> lighter straw and chaff, would scatter and carry  away. The grain that
> was to be used for seed or flour would be run through the  fanning mill.
> Oh! how I hated that fanning mill. I am not sure, but I think I  would
> be afraid of it even yet. I used to have to keep the cleaned grain
> cleared away from the front of it and I would rather have faced wild
> horses. I do  not really know why I was afraid of it, but I was. It
> stood in the granary and  I never went there unless I was sent for
> something.Things were getting easier  for us and Mother seemed quite
> happy and contented. It is true that there were  not a great many people
> in the country even then, it was a time in November  of 1847 that I have
> in mind, but several families that we liked and neighbored  with were
> near us and told us of things that were happening in other parts of  our
> new country. Our lives had settled into the new ways and we were
> contented  and happy in a peaceful valley.
>
> Walt Davies
> Cooper Hollow Farm
> Monmouth, OR 97361
> 503 623-0460
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