Threshing and Stooking
June 10th 2016
These articles are excerpts from Fred B. Stone’s “Stones on a Farm”, taken from Gleanings, (the follow-up book to Pioneers and Progress), Alix-Clive Historical Club, 1981. Both books are available for sale at Alix Wagon Wheel Museum, Alix Public Library, and Alix Home Hardware.
“The grain harvest followed hard upon the haymaking. The binder was powered by four horses, driven abreast. Stooking was a back-breaking job – probably the hardest, most monotonous, and concentration of manpower that the farm had to offer. It consisted of pucking up the sheaves or bundles of grain deposited in rows on the ground by the binder, standing them on their butts – leaning inwards for mutual support – in stooks of six to ten bundles each. The purpose of this was to expose the heads of grain to the sun and air so that the straw would dry out and the grain kernels would harden – thus permitting the grain to be shaken out of the straw as it went through the separator.
In the early days before there were enough threshing outfits to thresh all the grain prior to snowfall, it was the practice to assemble the stooks into stacks from which the bundles were subsequently pitched directly into the feeder of the separator. Stacking was also hard work, as it involved forking the stoked bundles into a bundle rack drawn by two horses, and then pitching them onto the stack with a man on the stack again forking the bundles into a butts-out- heads-in circular arrangement. The stack was rounded, with the sheaves sloping slightly upward so that rain and snow would not penetrate the stack and dampen the grain.”
“With the coming of more threshing machines, stook threshing became prevalent. Although this was also hard work for the bundle pitchers, and indeed for the grain haulers too – as they had to manually shovel every bushel of grain in transferring it from separator to storage – stook threshing was the most exciting operation on the farm. It revealed, in measurable form, the hitherto uncertain rewards of a year’s work.
Grain could be converted into cash, either by selling it on the market or by feeding it to livestock which, when fattened, could be in turn marketed for cash. There was the stimulating effect of being brought together in large numbers in a combined and sustained work situation. Each participant had to hold up his end, and the number of bushels threshed was a figure that all looked forward to hearing at the end of the day. Any failure, human or mechanical, could adversely affect that figure and, moreover, add to the risk of some farmer’s stooks being caught in the snow before the threshing gang got to them.
Strikes were unheard of and unthought of. Working hours were from “can’t see till can’t see”. Crewmen took their bedding with them as the outfit moved from farm to farm. They slept in haylofts and granaries. Their appetites were good and the farm women fed them well – serving, in effect, five meals a day, including lunches brought to the field morning and afternoon. Many a farmwife sighed in grateful relief as she watched the threshing machine roll slowly off her farm onto a neighbours’s field, taking with it a dozen ravenous appetites.
The advent of the tractor, powered by an internal combustion engine, eventually put the steam engine out of business.”
“The grain harvest followed hard upon the haymaking. The binder was powered by four horses, driven abreast. Stooking was a back-breaking job – probably the hardest, most monotonous, and concentration of manpower that the farm had to offer. It consisted of pucking up the sheaves or bundles of grain deposited in rows on the ground by the binder, standing them on their butts – leaning inwards for mutual support – in stooks of six to ten bundles each. The purpose of this was to expose the heads of grain to the sun and air so that the straw would dry out and the grain kernels would harden – thus permitting the grain to be shaken out of the straw as it went through the separator.
In the early days before there were enough threshing outfits to thresh all the grain prior to snowfall, it was the practice to assemble the stooks into stacks from which the bundles were subsequently pitched directly into the feeder of the separator. Stacking was also hard work, as it involved forking the stoked bundles into a bundle rack drawn by two horses, and then pitching them onto the stack with a man on the stack again forking the bundles into a butts-out- heads-in circular arrangement. The stack was rounded, with the sheaves sloping slightly upward so that rain and snow would not penetrate the stack and dampen the grain.”
“With the coming of more threshing machines, stook threshing became prevalent. Although this was also hard work for the bundle pitchers, and indeed for the grain haulers too – as they had to manually shovel every bushel of grain in transferring it from separator to storage – stook threshing was the most exciting operation on the farm. It revealed, in measurable form, the hitherto uncertain rewards of a year’s work.
Grain could be converted into cash, either by selling it on the market or by feeding it to livestock which, when fattened, could be in turn marketed for cash. There was the stimulating effect of being brought together in large numbers in a combined and sustained work situation. Each participant had to hold up his end, and the number of bushels threshed was a figure that all looked forward to hearing at the end of the day. Any failure, human or mechanical, could adversely affect that figure and, moreover, add to the risk of some farmer’s stooks being caught in the snow before the threshing gang got to them.
Strikes were unheard of and unthought of. Working hours were from “can’t see till can’t see”. Crewmen took their bedding with them as the outfit moved from farm to farm. They slept in haylofts and granaries. Their appetites were good and the farm women fed them well – serving, in effect, five meals a day, including lunches brought to the field morning and afternoon. Many a farmwife sighed in grateful relief as she watched the threshing machine roll slowly off her farm onto a neighbours’s field, taking with it a dozen ravenous appetites.
The advent of the tractor, powered by an internal combustion engine, eventually put the steam engine out of business.”
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1959 DVC, RAP binde, tractor
“Here’s a shot of Ronald Purkis’ tractor with me tagging along on a modified 6′ horse binder which he inherited from Cuthbert Wolfersatn. My job was to try to drop the bundles in reasonably straight rows for subsequent stooking.”
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