[AT] threshing day

[Herb Metz]

John, Thanks for mentioning this 29 minute film; brought back many memories 
as I experienced similar happenings for a couple weeks at least three 
summers.  A neighbor owned the threshing machine and a steam traction engine 
and covered the neighborhood (after combine harvesting) by threshing all of 
the bundled and loose stacked grain straw. His equipment included a long 
powered conveyor that feed into the conveyor that was part of the threshing 
machine. This enabled a wagon unloading from each side of conveyor at all 
times. So I soon had a chance to pitch bundles onto the conveyor. We used 
standard four tine pitchforks; bundle forks were two tine or three tine and 
don't appear to have as much curvature of the tines. Also it is easier to 
get the bundle from your fork if you only put the bundle on the end of the 
tines.  About the fourth bundle that I threw onto the conveyor took my fork 
with it; I could just imagine that fork tearing up the threshing part of 
that machine.  The adult pitching on the other side of the conveyor 
immediately saw my plight, and picked my fork from the bundle before it had 
moved very far. I will never forget that.
Dad told me about a meal time happening when he was pitching on a threshing 
machine. As the film properly includes the wife/women did all of the food 
prep, serving, cleanup, etc. Back then most breads were baked by the 
housewife. The housewife, who now became the waitress, could not handle when 
one of the young men did not eat the crust of the bread, and, in a profound 
way, said "Your mother bakes bread without crust?"; to which the young man 
immediately ate the crust.  I heard that story several times over the years; 
the best part being observing Dad laughing when he told that story. Herb(GA)

-----Original Message----- 
From: John Hall
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2017 3:51 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: [AT] threshing day

https://www.nfb.ca/film/country_threshing/