[AT] This is how wheat was harvested in early Oregon about 1850.

[DAVIESW739 at aol.com]

OOp! forgot its from my 2nd Gt. grand aunt 's  memiors about the Oregon trail 
and growing up in Wheatland, Oregon.

here  is some more of the story.
It was a tired but good natured and hungry crew of  men and boys, who 
gathered around the spring to wash up and cool off before  taking their places around 
the big table in the kitchen. Mother was a good cook  and at that time of 
year, she had Milk and eggs and a good garden. There was  always a young beef or 
a hog to kill. How those hungry, tired men would eat.  They were like ravenous 
wolves and it took them but a few minutes to finish  their suppers, then 
everybody went outside to rest on the grass and smoke and  sing, and tell stories, 
till bed time.When the cutting was all done and the  grain had fully cured in 
the shocks, Father and the boys would haul and stack it  at the side of the 
barn, stacking bundles in such a way that the long, outside  straws would shed 
the rain and the heads of grain would be inside and protected  from the 
dampness. It was rather a neat thing, and was always done by someone  who thoroughly 
understood it. The stack, when completed and topped with its last  bundle, 
should be as watertight as a carefully thatched roof. Sometimes we would  have 
five or six big stacks standing in a half circle around the trashing  floor.

No person, who has never "watched gap" can appreciate the  appalling, 
crushing monotony of it. Grown up people can never seem to remember  when they were 
little and were made to watch gap. A "gap" was a place where the  fence was 
opened up or laid down, if it happened to be built of rails and all  fences in 
those days were. When the bundles of grain or shocks of hay were being  hauled 
in, closing the fences after each trip was quite impossible, but I still  
insist that the barnyard stock could just as well have been shut in the barn or  
turned into the river pasture. Day in and day out, I sat by the gap, nothing in  
the world to do but stay there and keep the cattle out of the field. One year 
I  had the chicken pox during hauling time, and I was glad of it, I could 
scratch  and it gave me something to think about.

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