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threshing

thrash. 1. To beat out grain from; to thresh the husk off with a flail; to beat off, as to thrash wheat, rye, or oats. 2. To beat soundly with a stick or whip; to drub. — Webster, 1882
     
thresh. To thrash. — Webster, 1882
     
thresher. One who thrashes grain. Thrash is the popular pronunciation; but the word is written thrash or thresh, indifferently. — Webster, 1882
     
threshing-floor. A floor or area on which grain is beaten out, threshed around. — Webster, 1882
     
threshing machine / threshing-machine. A machine or apparatus for separating grain from the straw. — Webster, 1882

T.H. Maguire Co., Dealers in General Hardware, De Smet, Dakota. We handle the largest and best stock of Hardware, tinware, stoves, plows, agricultural impl’ments of all kinds & Descriptions ever brought across the Dakota Line. We handle the McCormick Farm Machinery, Reapers, Mowers & Harvesters, Threshers. We handle the J.H. Case Thresher, a machine known by its many years of operations. Standard Scales and Safes. E.H. Couse, Manager. – Kingsbury County News, February 24, 1881.

Walt. Holcomb has ordered a new threshing machine, which he expects will soon be here. It is a self feed and self band cutter. Walt. says it will make the threshing crew four men less. – The De Smet Leader, August 2, 1890.

     

Father Wilder was correct; a threshing machine breaks the straw; no doubt about it. According to the New York State Agricultural Society in the year Almanzo Wilder was born, the recommendation was to “rub out” seed wheat by hand (do you think Almanzo did that with his Marshall crop?); it was better than wheat threshed by the flail, yet wheat that had been threshed by the flail was far preferable to that threshed by machine. The flail didn’t crush the wheat kernels, and it was proven that when using a threshing machine, at least one-tenth of the kernels were either cracked, bruised, or had lost the wheat germ.

Of course, threshing by flail was a lot of work. One poem that mentions threshing – William Cowper’s The Task (1785) – includes the following:
     Sweating over his bread
     Before he eats it; the primal curse;
     But softened into mercy, made the pledge
     Of cheerful days and nights without a groan.

Or, as Father Wilder put it: “All [threshing by machine] saves is time, son. And what good is time, with nothing to do? You want to sit and twiddle your thumbs, all these stormy winter days?”

Prior to the introduction of threshing machines, one and a half bushels of seed wheat was generally used to seed an acre, but two bushels of seed threshed by machine were needed to give the same coverage, and often that was a little thin. Farmers who had complained of feeble, unproductive stands of wheat found that when they switched to flailed seed that was plump and unmutilated, they got strong, healthy plants and a field full of grain. “As ye so, so shall ye reap.”

One method of threshing that wasn’t mentioned in Farmer Boy was that of “treading out” the grain by horses or even oxen, in practice from Biblical times until the end of the 18th century. An entire crop could be beaten out in a few days, securing the wheat from both insects and thieves (i.e. rats, mice, and little boys who like to chew it). Treading-floors were often permanent and from forty to one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, with a path or track at the outer perimeter being about twelve feet wide. The horses were led around and around by halters, kept in pace at a sober trot. Four horses could be on the treading floor at the same time. Three thousand bushels of wheat could be separated out in four days by four horses on the threshing floor. It would take five men over one hundred days to do the same with a flail.

And those same four horses could walk in a circle and power a threshing machine, and accomplish the same results in a single day. [- From my old blog posted February 27, 2009.]

     


     

Left: Before threshing – head and stem of bearded wheat grown on Ingalls Homestead. Right: Several wheat stalks that have been beaten with a fist to separate the wheat kernels (some are circled in red) from the chaff and stalks.

Threshing / thrashing of grain or legumes is done by hand in Farmer Boy, using a wooden flail, which is used to repeatedly hit harvested grain piled on a hard surface. The flail was made of two wooden pieces loosely joined together so that when swung, the lower piece hit the grain in a horizontal position so that more surface area of the “bat” came in contact with the grain. The outer husk was separated from the grain, which drifted through the straw and chaff to the floor below. The straw was then moved aside with a pitchfork, and the grain swept up. Horse-powered threshing machines are used in the rest of the Little House books. While Father Wilder still thought the old ways were best, Charles Ingalls embraced new-fangled ideas when he could afford them. The terms separator and thresher or threshing machine are used interchangeably in the Little House books.

There are several 1938 letters between Laura and Rose written during the writing of the De Smet Little House books and because a reader questioned Rose’s details about threshing in “Let the Hurricane Roar.” It turns out that Rose didn’t know as much about threshing as she thought she did. These letters are included in William Anderson’s The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2016). In a letter dated April 15, 1938, Laura tells Rose that Almanzo remembered a steam thresher in use while he was living in Spring Valley in 1877, and she goes on to write that they were in use in Kingsbury County when she and Almanzo were married in 1885, although “the old horse power machines… were more generally used, because of the cost of fuel for a steam engine. The horse power was always there anyway.”

An 1880 calendar distributed by Gerald Fuller in De Smet featured the Buffalo Pitts threshing machine for water, horse, or steam power. Maguire and Couse advertised both McCormick and Case horse-powered threshers. It wasn’t until 1883 that a stream thresher made the news as being in use at Lake Preston, and in July 1888, Walter Holcomb, who farmed near Manchester, purchased a steam threshing outfit and went into business across the county. The Kingsbury County News reported: Walt. Holcomb’s new traction engine arrived… and his threshing outfit is now complete and the finest in the country. Separator, steam-power, tank supplied with force pump and hose, coal-house, tool-house, bedroom, bathroom and all modern conveniences. He has a force of fifteen men to boss him around and calculates to make Rome howl in several languages. L. E. Fellows sold the outfit and is mighty proud of its appearance. It was first tested on Fred. Dow’s grain and proved to have an appetite like a Washington Territory miner. Sadly, the explosion of Holcomb’s threshing machine engine in 1889 killed Cap Garland and Walter Holcomb’s brother, Horace, who was visiting his brother while on his honeymoon and was working on the rig for the first time.

1888 horse-powered threshing rig of Albert Cheney in Kingsbury County. The feeder of the thresher is just visible between the two stacks of bundles in the farmyard. Straw was thrown out of the thresher and stacked into a pile by several men. Note the fly nets that many of the horses are wearing. – Photo from a scrapbook at Hazel L. Meyer Memorial Library, De Smet.

There were many manufacturers of threshing machines during the Little House years, and most were similar in design. Bundles were fed into one end of the machine and were torn apart and moved along the conveyor by a series of aprons that rose and fell or rods that vibrated, the motion of which tossed up the straw and shook out the grain, which fell though to a lower conveyor. The machine pictured has a conveyor which takes the straw up and away from the machine. In 1879, a threshing outfit might cost between $150 and $300. Inset drawing shows the “insides” of a threshing machine.

     

thresh / threshing (BW 12; FB 24-27; BPC 8, 34; SSL 6, 11; TLW 3, 10, 16; THGY 29, OTWH Aug. 6); see also fanning mill
     thrash / thrashing (BW 3; FB 1; SSL 11; TLW 16; LTP 23; FFY Year 1; PG)
     threshers / threshing crew (BW 12; BPC 8, 29; SSL 6; THGY 29; FFY Year 1, Year 2)
     threshing beans (FB 25, TLW 3)
     threshing Canada peas (FB 25)
     threshing was like beating a drum (FB 25)
     threshing-floor (FB 2)
     threshing oats (FB 25)
     threshing machine / threshing-machine (BW 12; FB 25; BPC 8, 29; SSL 6; FFY Year 1; PG)
     threshing wheat (BW 12; FB 24-25; BPC 8; SSL 6; THGY 29)
     separator, part of threshing machine (BW 12)
     tumbling rod, part of a threshing machine (BW 12)

chaff (BW 12; FB 25; BPC 8; SSL 6) – The glumes, husk, or light, dry covering of grains and grasses. It consists of membranous scales which are separated from the seed by threshing, winnowing, or like process. — Webster, 1882

Illustration from Country Life Illustrated, June 4, 1898.


flail (BW 12, FB 25-26) – An instrument for threshing or beating grain from the ear by hand, consisting of a wooden staff or handle, at the end of which a stouter and shorter pole or club is so hung as to swing freely. — Webster, 1882 [Click HERE to see a flail in action.]

horsepower (BW 12) – A machine operated by one or more horses; a horse-engine. A unit or standard by which the capabilities of steam-engines and other prime-movers are measured; estimated at 33,000 pounds raised one foot in a minute. Work is an exertion of pressure through space. The unit by which quantities of work are measurable, is the labor necessary to raise one pound through the height of one foot. The rate at which work is done, is expressed in horse-power, and one horse-power is equivalent to the work done by continuous exertion at the rate of 33,000 lbs. raised through one foot in one minute; that is, to the performance of 33,000 units of work per minute. As a horse can exert such a force but six hours a day, one machinery horse-power is equivalent to that of 4.4 horses. — Webster, 1882 [Click HERE to see horse powered threshing in action.]

separator (BW 12) – One who, or that which, separates or disjoins; a divider. — Webster, 1882