Bringing Christmas in from the Swamp

Most years, our search for a Christmas tree was a challenge of thrifting. We always got our tree much closer to Christmas than most folks do. Sometimes a week before. Sometimes less. This always meant that tree sales of already-cut trees were somewhat discounted. We would find the perfect (maybe a little misfit) tree at a great bargain, throw it in the truck and make it into the best Christmas tree that ever was. That includes the year our misfit tree was so crooked it needed to be tied to the door knob of the unused door behind it to keep it from toppling over. Then again, I always say the best memories are not made because things go perfectly as planned. 

Me as Jo March in the Swamp 

Some years we visited those places where you could cut your own tree. Up and down the rows we went, zig zagging to find the one that was just right. One year this place was a friend's tree line that needed thinning. Options were more limited that round, but we found the perfect one anyways. I'm not sure there is such a thing as the perfect tree. The traditions, memories, and adventures are what make each one perfect.

But the years that were the most memorable were the few we went to the swamp. When Pa’s mama, my Grandma Nina, was young and lived down in the hollow. Grandma saw neighbor Ronald Joslin’s cedar Christmas tree, and it was the most beautiful tree she had ever seen. It smelled amazing and seemed to be perfect in every way. She tried a few times over the years, but it never did happen. Grandpa likely had a few cedar Christmas trees growing up. Their trees came from the swamp on the farm there. No one is around anymore to ask what for of trees they had in those days.

Grandma in a seat of roots made for a Fairy Queen

The story goes that while out hunting for a tree in the swamp, one of my uncles climbed up a cedar tree to cut the top off for a Christmas tree. He fell out of the tree and no cedar tree was to be had that year either. You see, Cedar trees grow a little sparse in branches and usually thicken up nicer towards the top. If you cut them at the ground like a regular Christmas tree there won’t be any branches at the bottom and the will likely be brown. But if you cut them further up the trunk, you get the best results, but only if you stay in tree long enough to cut it.

The swamp that is near and dear to us is made up of small bits of acreage all pieced together over time by my uncle and my cousins. In the old, old days, folks in the nearest town to the swamp all owned their lot in town and a small bit of swamp for cutting firewood. Nowadays, a few of these homes still have the swamp acreage attached. Most folks in modern times don’t have much use for this tiny bit of swamp. It is difficult to traverse both in the physical sense of putting your foot on solid ground, and in the geographical sense that it is incredibly easy to get lost. Pa got mixed up while hunting there one year and used the sound of the highway to navigate him back out to the road. My cousins once dragged a dead deer in a circle in the swamp while trying to use a GPS unit. Uncle Ed, an accomplished surveyor, prefers his trusty compass, and is happy to buy the little bits of swamp here and there creating the perfect place to hunt for a cedar Christmas tree. Provided it freezes hard enough to set foot easily in the swamp.

Pa and the beastly tamarack tree

Uncle Ed’s swamp was land locked, so we hiked in across a neighbor’s field on foot from the road. “We" being Mama, Pa-with a saw slung over his shoulder, Grandma, My Uncle Ed-with a compass in hand, and myself - dressed up like Jo March out for an adventure. We wander along looking at the sights and also searching for the perfect tree. Grandma, Mama, and I weigh in on which trees are our favorites, and which trees have taken on a whimsical appearance with age. The swamp is old and filled with trees aged to whimsical perfection. Pa stops, with his saw still resting over his shoulder, to admire the tamarack trees several feet wide. Tamaracks that large typically aren’t something you see anywhere other than built into the rafters of a hundred year old barn. 

Sawing our tree

We wander amongst the tamaracks and cedars until we find the right one. When we find it, Pa sets to sawing. The teeth bite into the green wood and he works it back and forth. The sawdust falls in a rainbow of browns and soon Uncle Ed is holding the tree Pa just sawed off. I clap my hands excitedly. Pa hoists it onto his shoulder, mama carries the saw. Uncle Ed checks his compass and we head for the truck. 

Christmas greens

Once loaded up, we head our separate ways wishing one another a Happy Christmas until we see them again on Christmas Day. The truck doors close and Pa opens the tea thermos. We have a cup of tea on the way home to warm us up. 

Carrying out the tree
(Probably would have been easier with a horse)

At home, Pa trims the bottom of the tree just right and fits it to the tree stand. Mama sets the tea kettle on and makes dinner. I wait impatiently. No matter how old I get I still hate waiting to decorate the tree. Apparently trees need to warm up, or settle, or whatever. I hate the wait. But Mama insists we do.

Finally after supper, tea is drank and things are cleared. Mama gets down the boxes of decorations. Christmas music rolls from the stereo, at least until Pa trades in Christmas music for fiddle tunes. There was a time when I begged and begged for lights on the tree. Now have simple and crisp white lights. Mama always does the lights. And then the fun part begins! Generations of family and friends pop out of the box of fragile decorations. Almost every ornament we put on the tree has a story. Mama can tell you who made it, or who owned it before we did, and now I can too. The childhood neon paper bell with glitter covered macaroni makes its appearance year after year. The delicate glass swans from great-grandma, the glass ball hand-painted by a local Nun, and the little set of vintage balls Grandpa called the “rudolf” ornaments because they had red paint on the little indentation like an old fashioned light. Those were always my favorites.

The tree settling in for its afterlife
as a Christmas tree

Every year is a bit different. Some years Mama strings wooden beads that remind me of plump cranberries, other years it is ribbon. There are always little miniature Tibetan prayer flags too. Last but not least, our topper. Mama saved the wrapping off of a wedding gift. It is a white dove in a nest. Every year the little dove builds her nest at the top of our tree. She reminds of the season, peace on earth and goodwill toward men. Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night. 

Winter Solstice

The winter solstice is the longest night of the year. For us, and many others for hundreds of centuries, it is a celebration of light. Our tree is always strung with little, white lights that shine for this celebration of light. There has always been an abundance of lamps and candles in the home place, and all of these are set to blazing for the darkest night. We sit with our lights by the parlor stove with a bowl of popcorn, lightly drizzled with yummy butter - there is so much warmth and glowing light to send us over this hump. From here on out the days get longer, the nights shorter, and Pa reminds us that threshing time is indeed, just around the corner. 

The winter solstice is just what I remember all the winter nights to be. The solstice, blizzards, and winter nights in general bring a familiar rhythm. And when I go back to the farm it is just the same as always.  

Though I spent many nights like these throughout my youth doing my own thing, I don’t remember those as clearly. Mama always said the biggest thing that pushed families apart compared to years ago, was not the television like many thinks, but central heat. I can speak from experience that it was less than pleasant to spend time shut away in my room because it was 50 degrees up there. Any project I set myself to was tough to do in my bedroom because my hands were freezing!! Instead, we gather by the parlor stove fire after chores for our evening activities. It is always cozy, warm, and mesmerizing to watch the flames leap behind the glass in the stove door.

When my parents bought the farm there was no central heating. Just wood burners and an old oil burning heater in the kitchen. I spent my first handful or so years of life in a house almost entirely heated with wood. Mama put me to bed with heated bricks to warm me up. Then I woke up with frost on the ceiling. I love the page in Little Town on the Prairie where Laura and Mary had to wait for Pa to shovel the snow off their bed before they could get up. I felt like that sometimes, though it never actually snowed in my room there was often frost on the ceiling. Mama left the cupboard doors under the sinks open and ran small space heaters to keep the pipes from freezing. It is worth noting that indoor plumbing tucked away behind cupboard doors isn’t really commonplace in history until central heating was established. I remember getting to use a space heater when I was taking a bath. Getting out of the bathtub under any other circumstances still makes me wish I had that old heater.

All these cold winter nights began with Pa coming home from work and we’d pull our chairs to the table. Dinner was warm and delicious. There isn’t a whole lot that Mama makes that doesn’t taste delicious. Pa buttered his bread, filled up his plate and his tea cup. We’d all do the same. Sometimes there would be neighbors at the table and sometimes not. Either way, the conversation flowed about our days, our plans, and whatever else. The meal would be consumed, and tea cups refilled. 

Bundled in heavy duck cloth with thick quilted lining, we’d head out into the dark, snow-covered night for chores. Ice is busted from water tanks, hay divvied up into mangers. And the best part, letting the horses in. Pa would slide open the big door. “hello there - insert the silly unforgettable nickname here” Pa greeted each horse as they came in single file, and in almost always the same order. And they head to their stalls. The routine is methodical and comforting. Pa and I put halters on each horse, loving on them along the way. The best sound in the world is a barn full of horses munching on hay. When the barn light goes off, it seems to get louder, rhythmic, and meditative. I’d listen for a few minutes before heading inside. Warm light from the windows beckoned us in like a lighthouse on the coast. 

The tea kettle sings with Pa’s fiddle, and a fresh pot of tea was brewed. We settle in for the night by the fire. A frequent phrase I heard growing up was, "You don't have a TV?! How do you even live?" The answer to this is really simple. I do, and very fully at that. I don't waste very much time in front of a talking box that told me all about the world and what was popular and all that. I just went out and found out for myself. I explored it and where I couldn’t go, I read about it. And that is what my family is exceptional at - reading! We read to learn, we read for the pure enjoyment, and we read just because. 

Our winter evenings were spent around the parlor stove with its glass window in the door. There is always something mesmerizing about watching a fire burn. Mama's knitting needles clicking away (when she wasn’t reading herself and sometimes she does both at the same time! Wow!) while Pa and I usually absorbed ourselves with books. On special nights we had popcorn too. We munched and read, sometimes reading parts aloud that were funny or interesting. We love primary-source material. I think Pa has read the Case Steam Traction Engine Manual about 500 times. Mama is a fan of magazines from the turn of the century - twentieth century that is. My whole life, my family has enjoyed history.  Living history events, various interpretative events, old tools, machinery, methods, etc. We read to fuel that, and to advance our knowledge of things others have forgotten. We read to research, take apart, and put back together.

Several books our family finds common ground on is; the Little House Series, The Land Remembers, anything by Eric Slone, and so much more. These books are a carefully crafted blend of the enjoyable ease of a novel, yet still carry a tremendous amount of factual content. We read though them and comb through the details. Then we go out and dig deeper, reading on the things that intrigue us, what is fact, what is not. And we find more books.

By the time I started kindergarten, Mama had read me the Little House books five times. When I was little, I was Laura. Mama could rule serious disciplinary action by simply saying "Laura" in a certain tone of voice and I knew I had done wrong. In my old age, I know there are parts of Laura’s story that have been changed to sell books rather than retell her actual story. I comb the pages of the annotated version of Pioneer Girl, a book that is more footnotes than it is Laura’s original writing, and I love it. I hang on every word, infuriated by the need to change historical details to sell books. 

Still, I have always loved novels and adventures to far away places. I love to get lost in the fantasy of those places. Books that take the folk lore of a place and breathe life into it. The fair folk of the British isles are not just little fluttering, huggable fairies. They are not to be trifled with. The books set in a faraway land everyone rides horses into battle without reins! Others where sly girls outsmart villains. Oh the places you can go!

When it was time for bed, we would snuff the candles, stoke the fires, and climb the chilly stairs. We snuggled deep under our quilts with visions of sugar plums, ferocious fairy queens, steaming locomotives, and future gardens dancing in our heads. 

Threshing Time - Part 3 - A Legacy

 Threshing time brings light to the eyes of old men and women, and even not-so-old men and women all across rural America. The same is true at our farm. At threshing time we hear the reminiscing of memories both at the thresher man’s table and while leaning on a fork out in the field. In the days when threshing crews were commonplace, folks became well practiced in this art which they love to pass on. 85 year old men who can’t even remember what they ate for breakfast, set their forks in motion during threshing time with the muscle memory of acquired skills. Us young folk have a lot to learn yet, but we’ve made memories to share too. Some of which are just stories I’ve heard enough times that I only think I remember them as actual events. Many are the memories of my cousins, George, our horses, the good ol’ 10-20, and Mama and Pa as the farm comes so alive with the joy of the season. And there are many others that leave a lasting impression too.

Bill Miske and George Hoffmann theshing in 
the barn in 1989.

I was one year old when Bill Miske came to thresh at our farm, at least that’s what it says on the back of the photo. He walked in an awkward shuffle with a broom stick. His legs had been crushed at some point in his life and he was put to bed with sandbags packed in around his legs. I don’t suppose he was expected to live at the time. Yet, at 95 years old, he was lending a hand on our threshing rig. A “chief thresher man” he was called. The belt that ran from the tractor to the thresh machine was slipping a bit that day. Bill shuffled off to the house to inquire to Mama, “Madam? Do you have any Karo syrup?” Though disputed by some and believed to attract varmints(which seems likely), corn syrup can provide a good belt dressing. It. worked well for us that day. Pa told me that he had never seen a 95 year old man eat so much as Bill ate that day. I guess a days work will earn you an appetite no matter how old you are!  Mama tells me Bill’s father was born in the 1850s. History is much closer than you think - to imagine that I met someone when I was young who’s father would have remembered when the Civil War raged in the United States.

Hank Schact was another fond memory, a friend to my folks, and neighbor to my husband growing up. He worked on a threshing crew as a young man, spending his summers traveling farm to farm. Even at 90, he’d get a little worked up recalling which farms served their beer to the threshers watered down. 70 years can’t even fade the memory of such an unforgivable offense. These are the things most remember about threshing, not the work, the sweat, or the sun. They remember the dinners served and the beer drunk. They remember the friends they made and the pranks they pulled. Sometimes even the girls they met. On a bright sunny day a few years back, Hank picked up a fork and loaded his last bundle wagon at 85 years old. I’ll never forget the smile of that old man up on the steam engine platform, grinning from ear to ear like a little boy who just got his first Red Ryder.

Verna on the left in both photos - Then and Now.

Verna Yeadeke’s father, Walter Keller loved steam engines. So much so he fell in with a fellow named Fred who owned one. Fred had a daughter whom Walter eventually married, built a house, and had a daughter with. Verna remembers her father’s love for steam power. In a photo you can see sitting in the dirt near an engine running in the background. That engine in the background is our engine today. It’s funny how things come full circle. Imagine Verna’s delight in getting to see her grandfather’s engine running again. Our 75 Case came from just up the road (unbeknownst to us at the time of purchase) and has a legacy all its own through Verna’s photos and memories. The first time we threshed with it on our farm may not have been the first time that engine was even on our farm. We’ve also discovered that our engine was modified early on by a friend of Walter Kelly’s, who sawed off the second pulley that the engine was shipped from the factory with. We are so glad she was able to see it run again.

Probably the same year Hank was loading bundles, Gertie Schladweiler, my husband’s paternal grandmother, came with family to see the events of the day. Tears flowed. Her dear Pa had run the engine on a threshing rig, many, many, years ago. Even though Gertie was suffering from dementia at the time, this she remembered. I asked her about it once. She told me the threshing was the men’s work. She worked in the kitchen, just as my own Mama was busy with at that exact moment. She recalled the huge meals put on for the crews. While the men worked, the women worked to outdo the neighbor women in who could put on the best feast. No matter the type of work they contributed, it didn’t change the light and tears in her eyes remembering the fond memories.

My grandparents all did some threshing in their younger years and they have all been out to the farm loading bundles and bagging up grain. Even though it is a recreational sport for them nowadays, it still makes them smile. My paternal grandmother loaded bundle wagons, just like when she was young on the farm in the hollow. She was into her eighties when we quit threshing. Miles of home video footage show her loading wagons at all ages. I am quite sure she would still be loading them if we were still hosting a threshing day on the farm today, just to say that she did.

Some of the memories are events we attended in days gone by. In the early years, there were more small farmers - and more farmers who had horses. We didn’t have a trailer to haul the horses in those days, so Pa drove our team from our farm out to Schmidt’s farm. That farm was nearly twenty minutes by car, so we’d start out early in the morning, pulling two bundle wagons hooked together. Mama held little me in her lap (I was maybe two at the time), had a bag of snacks, chairs, and her dish to pass all piled on behind Pa. It took a healthy 2 hours and then some to get there with Dude and Rusty, but it was worth it. We threshed off the field with an old oil-pull tractor, hauled bundle wagons with our team and were joined by other farmers and their teams as well. We enjoyed a meal together, then started the long drive home. 

There just aren’t as many threshing bees as there used to be, and shows simply aren’t the same as the real deal. There aren’t nearly as many horses, and usually just a handful of loads to be threshed each day. Those who come to watch miss the effect of the steady flow of wagons to and from the field. A show can’t compare to what it’s like it is to thresh off a whole crop in the field. There’s not the satisfaction in it like there is to look at field clear of shocks on the way out of the drive. 

As Pa would say “the old-timers keep getting younger.” I don’t know anyone who knew anyone old enough to remember the Civil War, but we do have their memories if we are willing to take the time and listen. That is one of my favorite things about threshing. The memories. The things the old-timers remember and the new memories we continue to make year after year, even if the only threshing we do these days are at shows.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

One of Mama's yummy free formed loaves

Did you know that my Mama has never bought a loaf of bread in all her married days? She has always baked the nourishing and rich bread to put on our table. Let’s see...baking four loaves a week for thirty some odd years makes it a minimum of somewhere around 7,100 loaves. Of course that’s a low estimate because there are always extras. There was the summer when she baked a few batches for the local farmer’s market (20 loaves a week for a summer). There are loaves baked special for holidays and parties, weeks when there was extra company at the table, sandwiches for threshing crews, and so on. We are just going to say Mama has made 8,000 loaves of bread. I don’t think it is a stretch at all, maybe even 9,000. If you are reading this in a year - then 10,000 loaves!

Pa comes from the old-style family where his mother baked eight loaves a week to feed her five children, most of which were bottomless boys. Like Mama, my grandma too set thousands of loaves of bread to rise. Grandma made her bread in an old-fashioned bread pail; a metal bucket secured to the table top with a clamp of sorts. Inside was a dough hook that was operated with a hand crank. The stress of turning eight loaves a week in that pail actually tore it apart over time. The pail affectionally showed many repairs. Grandma measured out her recipe by eyeing up a bit of this and a whole lot of that. Somehow it always turned out. My Pa and my uncles still eat bread with all their meals. Pa has been known to ask for bread even when we are eating pizza. I don’t think it would be entirely out of the question for Pa to have a slice of bread on the side with a sandwich. In the years before he worked at home, he easily put away a half a loaf a day between his tin lunchbox, sandwiches, and the supper table. 

Mama makes her bread much the same way as Grandma. Pulling her recipe from her memory bank, she dumps ingredients in a vintage-style bread pail, only sort-of measuring. Both her pail and mine have matching tin lids that rest over the tops while the dough rises. When Pa worked in a tool and die shop, he brought her a bread machine. It couldn’t make bread fast enough to keep up, so Mama went back to the tried and true way of making four loaves at a time in the pail. Just the way she has taught me.

To make the best bread in the world, you start with the wet ingredients. Warm water, yeast, oil. Then you add the dry stuff and cup after cup of flour. Last that metal lid slips on and it sets to rise while Mama tends to chores, makes lunch, tends the garden, etc. When it is ready, a quick crank of the handle pulls the risen dough away from the sides of the pail and the ball of dough can be lifted out while still on the dough hook. 

The bread pail rising.

Mama’s floured work table features a wooden top made by Pa. Its honey color disappears and reappears under Mama’s hands as she kneads the mass of bread dough. She neatly divides it into four pieces, kneads each one a bit, and rolls it flat with her fist. The bubbles make a crackling sound as she squeezes them out. The flat-ish piece of dough is then neatly rolled into a round log. Mama places it in the pan and with a quick flick of the wrist, rolls it over so the top and sides are all coated with a bit of oil for a truly fantastic crust. The loaf pans, or sometimes free formed loaves, sit for a second rise under a crisp flour sack towel. Then into the oven they go!

The best part of making bread is when it comes out of the oven. Especially on the best fall and winter nights. Pa and I love when the Bread Day routine happens in the evening. Hot-out-of-the-oven bread with melted butter and drizzled with honey is the best bedtime snack. We enjoy it with a cup of sleepy tea by the fire with a great book. I sometimes call it a farmer’s doughnut. 

Today I mix bread in a pail too, a gift from my Mama. I turn the crank with help from my kids. I add the ingredients, I put the lid on, I knead (mine never snaps quite like Mama’s), I shape, I bake, and I especially enjoy a slice of hot out of the oven bread smothered with butter and honey. How truly delicious!

Threshing Time - Part 2 - The Big Day

Threshing Crew in 1991

 There are few days on the calendar like “Threshing Day.” When a field of shocks have dried and cured as they should, a day is chosen to be “Threshing Day.” A few family and friends gather in the early morning, and we walk though the field with our trusty three-tined forks pitching the shocks apart to dry the dew off. By noon, the driveway is filling up. Mama serves a quick lunch to the early comers of hearty farm-style ham sandwiches, potato salads, cookies, ice tea, and so on, and we move on to the next phase of the day. 

George watching the 10-20

Once the dew dries off, we fire up the tractor, hitch up the team, fire the boiler, or ready whatever type of horsepower we are using that day. Great horsepower comes in many forms. Some years we thresh in the field, others in the barn yard, and in the earliest years, in the barn itself. No matter the location, the thresh machine was set up and ready to go. Meticulously leveled from side to side, the back wheels dug into the ground a bit, all greased, and tested out usually by Pa and George. Occasionally Mama helped or I made myself a nuisance in the process as well. Most years, Pa sees to the workings of a half a dozen other things and George places himself up on the separator for an optimum view and to see to it that things are done properly. He gives the signal for go, and the thresh machine roars to life. He signals for a shut down, greases a few last things, and then the crew waits for the first bundle wagon of the day.

Me driving Ivan and Reuben on the bundle wagon 
in 2007

While the separator crew is going over the thresh machine one last time, another crew is out in the field loading the first of many wagons of the day. The team of horses meander through the field, weaving between the rows of shocks while the ground crew, armed with three-tined forks, throw on bundles, heads facing to the center. When the bundles reach a certain level, it usually becomes my job to stack on the wagon. I climb up and begin neatly organizing bundles down the center and arranging the outside edges in such a way that the load is sturdy enough to be good and tall. Higher and higher I stack until the ground crew can’t reach me with their forks anymore and it is declared that the load is full. Off to the threshing rig we head. Some loads get stacked too high and run the risk of sliding off. I’ve only made that mistake a few times. 

Pa with a load of bundles

Mama comes to see how things are getting on and sets aside a nice bundle or three to put out for the birds on Christmas day. A tradition of ours since we read about it in The Land Remembers. I enjoy pitching bundles into the separator, so I don’t give up my place on top of the load easily. I demand a fork and start pitching when George gives the go ahead. He watches me to see if I make a mistake. Usually, my only mistakes are early in the day, and having heckled me for them then, he now gives me a little nod of approval not easily earned from George.

Pa bagging up grain at the chute

Pa appears by the grain chute. He checks the grain. If we are bagging it up that year, he spends some time bagging grain and tying miller’s knots with agile, but work-heavy hands. Next he checks the blower pipe to be sure no precious grains are finding their way into the straw stack. When all is running in harmony, the first wagon is just being cleaned off when the next load is lining up. On the opposite side of the machine, full wagons of grain make their round trips to the granary and back. All day it goes like that until you have earned your supper.

Threshing has had a few seasons at the farm. In the earlier years we threshed in the barn, running the grain chute right into the granary and poking the straw blower into the mow. That was dusty business. We threshed with either the old McCormik Deering 10-20 on steel wheels, which I affectionately called the “twen-tweny” before I could clearly articulate 10-20, or the Allis-Chalmers. The bundle wagons were run by horses. 

Pa with Ivan and Nellie and a load of grain

Then the operation moved to the field. Same equipment, just in the field. Well, maybe the thresh machine was a different one. George enjoyed collecting them. Eventually we settled on out beloved JI Case separator. Same tractor, though, and good old Dude and Rusty were trusty on the bundle wagon and hauling the grain wagon full of pure, golden barley up to the granary in the barn. 

Then there is a break were we didn’t thresh for a couple of years. A neighbor combined for us. I suppose we were just busy with other things, but the gathering of friends, neighbors, and family was missed. Plus, Pa will always tell you that the thresh machine does a better job than the combine anyways.

Our 75 Case ready for threshing

When Pa bought our steam traction engine, threshing made a huge comeback. Where in the early days of the farm, it was a weekend with mostly family and a few neighbors turning out to help. With the engine, it is a few family and our nearest 100 friends and neighbors. There is never a shortage of help and a great time his had by all. Pa is a dozen places at once. You blink and you might miss him. We got steam power on the separator, horsepower of the bundle wagon, a few gas tractors puttering around. There are old timers with a prime view of the scene from the front seat of a Model T, reminiscing about the threshing crews they worked on when they were young. George is up there on the separator demanding excellence. Pa is reminding the engine crew that “I wanna see that pressure gauge at 149.5 pounds! Keep up steam boys! This ain’t no show! We got work to do!” And it is true. No leisurely boiling of water here. A steady149.5 psi means perfection. It means the perfect balance of fire and water. Keeping up steam(psi) means constant fire tending, watching the water level, oiling and greasing, and checking the water level again. To maintain that 149.5 psi is a challenge and perfection all at once. If the engine looses steam(psi), the whole operation stops, and no one wants that. Not on Threshing Day. 

When the last bundle whistles through the thresh machine, the last puff of straw through the blower pipe, the signal to shut down is given. Mama has come down a few times throughout the day, but her time to shine is after the signal to shut down is given. When we thresh with steam power, there is sweet corn steaming alongside the engine for the last load. The crew brings it along up to the house when they come. Most take off their hats and discard them in the lawn. Some wash up in the house, others in the basin Mama set up outside with soap and warm water. On the dining room table in the house it is filled right out to the edges with glorious food. Folks fill their plates and head out to the table in the yard. 

The crew at the theshermen's table
after a day's work

Earlier in the day, when the dew was still drying off, Mama and I had set Pa’s sawhorses with heavy home-sawn planks laid across. It is set up under the comfortable shade of the Maple tree. The table is twenty feet long or better. We spread table clothes over the rough, splintery fuzz left behind by the saw-blade. We had also gone over the whole farm collecting every chair we could find. The thresher men’s table was then ready for dinner. 

George on the thresh machine keeping bundle
pitchers, Ike and Jake in line.

 The day is so busy, so alive, and so filled with friendship. My cousins, Izaak and Jake, prioritize the day at the top of the list with Thanksgiving and Christmas. They set out to opposite sides of the country after college, living their own adventurous lives, but you will always find them back on the bundle wagon wielding forks with practiced ease taught and supervised by George. No one can pitch off a more consistent load than Ike (Izaak) and Jake. Not an inch of the thresh machine feeder is bare, bundles march into the machine heads first in a strict order. Even George, the icon himself, can’t find anything to complain about. One year, Ike and Jake set in with such dedication, working without gloves until their hands raw with blisters. Actually, they never noticed the blisters until suppertime. Sitting under the maple at supper, the suggestion of gloves may have been mentioned, and it probably hurt to hold so much as a pen the next day. Ike and Jake will wield a pitch fork just as well as a dinner fork, so you will also find them at the thresher men’s table with plates full enough to feed a pen of hogs. And for Izaak, a half gallon jar of farm fresh milk to top it all off. The feast is bigger than Thanksgiving and Christmas combined, and heartily earned.

Threshing Crew 2008
Mama & Pa on the bundle wagon.
My now husband, myself, and cousins Ike and Jake
on top of the thresh machine 

As evening wears on, the crew goes their separate ways. Food stuffs are cleaned up, pitchforks put away, and the straw stack tightened up a bit. Evening chores are done, and the engine crew gathers to swap stories and watch the pressure gauge fall from 149.5 to 0. We are all tired. Away to our beds, too tired to think, we dream about next years threshing time, which as Pa would say is “Just around the corner.”

Threshing Time - Part 1 - Binding

If Pa had to boil down his favorite times of the year to just a few, threshing time would be high on the list. It could be the first hard frost and Pa will gleefully proclaim that threshing is “just around the corner.” Of course he would also proclaim the first frost was “just around the corner” at planting time too. This usually earned him a heartfelt glare from Mama because who could possibly be thinking of winter when the barley wasn’t even in the ground yet. 

Threshing time was, and still is, one of my favorite times of year as well. I love walking through the field in the early hours to pitch the shocks apart, the hum of the separator, the long thresher's table under the maple tree. And what I like most of all is the day shared with friends, family, and neighbors, who in some cases check more than one box on that list. This is all perhaps why I don’t care much for binding, a necessary evil of threshing, and also why Mama says that everyone loves threshing but no one loves binding.

Threshing is the process used at the turn of the ninetieth century, a few decades before, and many decades after, friends and neighbors gather to separate grains from the stalk they grow on. The grains can be sold or used for livestock feed and the remaining stalk, called straw, for livestock bedding. In order to thresh, grain must first be cut and made into bundles for easy handling. To do this, we bind. unlike threshing, binding is monotonous, dull, and usually done without the help of the whole neighborhood. 

Each year, I think I like binding, I get excited for binding, and when I am in the field up to my elbows in fresh bundles of barley with barley beards in unmentionable places with no shade trees in sight, I am less than enthusiastic. What it does have going for it is what Pa calls “quality family time.” By this he means we are all together in the field, working together in a way that most farms don’t these days with family members working spread over a thirty acre field. This isn’t a bad thing. Farm families work closer than any other family unit in my humble opinion, just not as close as they did a century ago, or even half a century ago. There is an old family story of great-grandpa binding off a field that was so hilly he tipped over the binder. A binder is wide and low to the ground. We wonder if this really happened, or if it is a silly story concocted to show just how big the hills on the Lynn Road farm really were. One has to wonder - as we do each year at binding time. 

Like all other field work, Pa walks to check the field, now soft golden waves. He pulls a stem and checks the stem. The straw should be a bit green yet. He plucks a barley head, rolls the grains around in his hand. Then he takes a few stems and checks the moisture while rolling a few grains around between his teeth. If the field is declared ready, the next day will have a team in the barn around noon time when all the dew is off. 

The morning will be spent going over the old McCormick binder one last time, making sure all the grease cups are filled, moving parts oiled, and the aprons fitted and snugged ready to carry sheafs of grain along the machine to the knotter and out to the bundle carrier. The long pole needed to be fitted and the traveling wheels used to stow the machine in the shed need to be removed and the large drive wheel cranked down. Mama rings the bell and calls, so we head in for lunch after the finishing touch of the pin in the evener. A two horse evener for the first round, and the three horse evener, a finger-pinching-monster which Pa calls the eighth wonder of the world, is on stand by.

Beauty, Valerie, and Rueben on the binder

The team, and often a third horse, enjoys lunch while we do. The water jugs are filled after a noon meal and, when I was old enough, Pa and I would head to the barn to harness the horses. Three horses are best for pulling a binder. It is a heavy piece of equipment. When all three are ready, we lead them out to attach the lines at the hitching post outside the milk house door. Pa ground drives the team up to the binder for hitching. The team is hitched up and we head to the field.

Opening the field means two horses on the binder and it is driven backwards or clockwise around (Usually- My great-grandpa had a Deering binder that was backwards from this with the blades on the right and the carrier on the left. Ours has the blades on the left and carrier on the right, as do most binders and also most tractor drawn machinery as well.). The old timers often put muzzles on the horses for this round because the horses are walking through the grain. They are like kids in a candy land and often need lots of encouraging to keep moving. There is also risk for a bellyache. A trip around the field backwards leaves the bundles deposited into the still standing barley. I follow along throwing these bundles out of the path of the next round, and also tagging along in case any adjustments need to be made along the way. One particularly wet year there were an astonishing amount of frogs hopping about as we made our way around the field. It was comical to watch the frogs bouncing off the apron canvases that fed the cut grain into the machine. The binder asks a lot of man and beast. Pa sits over 15ft back from the horses and has extensions buckled to the lines so the reach far enough. He has a 15 foot cane fishing pole that he uses to get the horses attention should their hearing become selective or his words are carried away on the wind. In addition to driving the distant team, Pa has a series of levers in front of him and his foot hooked in a pedal. The levers adjust the twine on the bundle; knot placement, how high or low the twine is tied. The pedal trips the bundle carrier to drop neat piles of bundles. You pull the pedal up to drop the bundles and push it down again to raise it up. It is indeed a complicated and miraculous piece of mechanical genius when everything is working correctly. Which it usually is. 

Reuben, Valerie, and Beauty on the binder with 
finished shocks to the right.

Pa adds on the third horse and all the rest of the rounds are made counterclockwise. After about three rounds the bundle carrier is pulled out. Pa drops the bundles in neat piles of four or so. He trips the bundle carrier in about the same spot each time around the field. This way our shocks will be standing in rows and we don’t have to haul bundles from one row to the next. 

Mama and I work our way around the field building shocks, little huts of bundles to shed water while the grain finishes ripening in the field. Nine bundles in a shock. Eight stacked in a round and one cap, heads pointing to the east. Knots to the inside leave the shiny side of each bundle to the outside where it will shed water the best. Grandpa, Pa’s Pa, taught us the proper way to shock barley when Pa and Mama first got the farm.

Pa and the Rye Shock

Different grain crops are better suited to different shock styles. Some, like oats, prefer long tents with two bundles propped up with their heads together end to end. Barley has a weaker stem, therefore it weathers better in a round shock with a neat and tidy cap on top to help shed water, and preserve the color of the grains. Once we shocked rye in preparation for a farm show and the shocks were as tall as Pa. I took a picture of him looking delightfully “old timey” posed next to it. All in all, how a family chooses to shock is by personal preference. My Mama, Uncles, Grandparents, and eventually us kids were toted around the field in the coaster wagon with a pile of water jugs and other miscellaneous items. My babies have been carted around the field in this way too. Toddlers in sunhats and sunscreen with the little potty chair in the wagon too so we don’t offset our potty training missions by being a half mile from the house.  After a few rounds the excitement wears off and my envious eye follows Pa and the team around the field, wishing it was done and all magically shocked. Or at the very least that Pa will put the team away and add his zealous energy to the shocking, renewing mine in the process. 

An artfully hand tied bundle

Before binders there were reapers. It did just what the binder does when the knotter isn’t working. A reaper is a step ahead of cutting by hand. It cuts the grain and sweeps it into piles to be tied by hand. If the knotter on the binder fails, it leaves our barley in a neat pile where the bundle carrier drops it. Occasions like this have taught me to have a length of twine in my pocket just like Pa. I tie the bundles by hand, trimming the access twine with a pocket knife. Mama and Pa can both tie bundles with the straw itself. Like the old, old timers did, carefully twisting the straws around itself and tucking it in. Artful but time consuming.  

Often the work of binding takes us two days. These days if we thresh at all, it is usually just Mama and I shocking and Pa driving. In this way I am thankful we still use a team. With a tractor, binding requires two people; one on the tractor, and one on the binder. The invention of the tractor was a step back for binding technology, which I am sure has lead to the invention the the combine. Pa pulls the team around to get the last sliver of barley still standing. He rests the team for a moment or two at the end the the field. Then I help him unhitch the binder in front of the shed, put the horses in the barn and give them a little hay to enjoy while we finish up in the field. Mama and Pa and I put the last shocks together.

“There!” Pa says “Now she can rain!”

“But not too much,” Mama adds.

“Right. Not too much.” Pa agrees, standing and surveying the field with his hands on his hips.  We all look at the field in the setting sun. It looks perfect with its tidy rows of shocks drying neatly and, like us, getting ready for threshing. Pa and I go to unharness the team and Mama starts on the other chores. If we are lucky, we get to finish off the day with a slice of cake or some cookies and a cup of tea before bed.

"Threshing Icon" - George Hoffmann

George Hoffmann at 
my parent's wedding 
reception

It is most impossible to tell the story of theshing time without introducing a character named George. Mr. George Hoffmann was and still is an ever present force at the farm. He first met Pa when he was a frequent visiter to the shop where Pa was blacksmithing. George was there for my parent's wedding, my baptism, and he was a regular visitor to the farm until one day he just never left. I was three years old when he sold his house and moved into the downstairs bedroom at our house. I remember moving day, perhaps my earliest memory of him and in general too, eating sub sandwiches at his kitchen table. It was all temporary you see, he was in between places at the time. But he never found another place until nearly thirty years later. Indeed he lived in my childhood home longer than I did. After a few years of living with my family, he began to spend winters in Texas, but always came back home to the farm for the rest of each year. I think our farm it was where his heart called home all those years, and because we were his family - but not in the biological sense of the word.

George, myself, and Pa in our farm wagon pulled
by Dude and Rusty

George is the same age as my paternal grandparents. I often forgot that as a kid. He was my babysitter, watchful eyes waiting for my mistakes, but still carrying a guiding force of which I have learned many things.

Like a parent, or grandparent, it is hard to imagine George with a life before the farm. He was born and raised a ways south of our farm. He had spent his life in various capacities. George never married. He spent time caring for his mother, serving in the military as a mechanic, and he had been a carpenter his adult working life. He’s pretty handy with a carpenter square when the need arises, provided he was up for a project. George simply doesn’t do things he prefers not to do. He has great stories of working for the Fromm Brothers when he was a kid, raising silver foxes. He shares our great love for old things. He keeps collections of anvils, threshing machines, lawn mowers, case SC tractors, and what ever else strikes his fancy at the moment. In the early years on the farm, we threshed with a different machine almost every year - and they all belonged to George. At one time he had three of them he kept at the farm; a John Deere, Case, and a Huber. 

Pa and I on the ground, George on top of his John
Deere thresh machine

In the early days of my life, we only had one vehicle. A 1987 Dodge pickup truck. The kind with an ornamental rams head sticking up on the hood. On days Mama needed to go somewhere, she would have to drive Pa to work. Often she left me sleeping at home, provided George was there to keep an eye on me if I woke up. One time a deer met an unfortunate end with the front of the pickup, delaying Mama’s return. George watched me all that morning, bribing me with pretzels to pick up my toys. 

“Ok,” he’d say, “put that back in the toy box.” I did as he asked. “Good, here’s a pretzel. Now put that one back in the box. Good, here’s a pretzel.” The process was repeated many times until Mama came home to find the toys cleaned up and George and I munching on pretzels. To this day, I still think of George and pretzels together. That, and cold pork n’ beans. Despite living with us, all those years he rarely ate with us. It seemed he’d rather enjoy his meals cold out of the can, in the driver seat of his car or with friends at McDonalds. I always thought it a special day when George sat down to table with us.  

As a kid, he never yelled at me but once, though he did have a sly way of tattling on me. The time he yelled at me, it was for climbing the elevator parked in the yard. “You’ll get down from there!” he hollered. I did, rather alarmed. His single sentence brought my Mama running too. Thank God I wasn’t heavy enough to counter balance the machine and ride twenty-five feet to the ground on it like an over sized seesaw. Usually, he would raise Mamas attention by asking me what I was doing loud enough for her to hear. “Are you suppose to be cutting that up?” he loudly questioned once. I had been playing fabric store. This brought my mother running and that was the end of my fabric store, and consequently, the end for many of my dress up clothes, which I had shredded.

Like any farmer with a sense of humor, George loves badgering people. Another favorite pastime of his. He badgers the folks at the grocery store to carry single serving ice cream containers so he could eat them in the car. He badges sales people for free stuff. No one probably knows this better than the ladies who worked at the Guarantee Bank. “Open a checking account - Get a cooler.” He’d come home with two. One for me, one for Mama. “I told them they were small and I needed two,” he’d always say, and that is how I had everything I needed to start my own household by the time I moved out. He brought pizza wheels, Pyrex baking dishes, ice cream scoops, thermal cups, glasses, you name it, and an endless supply of pencils, pens, and keychains. 

He kept the lawn in tip top shape mowing it several times a week for the love of his Wheel Horse vintage mowers. Some of my earliest tractor driving experiences took place sporadically here and there on a wheel horse under George’s watchful eye. “Hannah!” he’d say, “come here once, what do you think of this?” I would nod unsure of what the answer was supposed to be or what was coming next. “Sit down. Here’s the clutch, put you foot on that and put it all the way down. No - all the way down” At this point, he’d rev the engine a bit. “Ain’t she a honey huh?” He’d say beaming down at me, “take her for a spin.” “Don’t wreck nothing!” would be what he called after me, after I drove away. I would mow for a while until I finished or until he kicked me off. The opportunity usually didn’t appear again for months, but any education in the handling of machinery, no matter how small, is valuable on a farm. 

Occasionally he would lend a hand in haying or some other task if he happened to be around. He enjoyed turning a wrench and agitating Pa while he was working on tractors. Anyone who could survive the agitation came out with more knowledge of the puzzle of the tractor than they started with. When he was around for hay baling and Pa was still at work, it was just he and Mama starting out. The constant argument was always who got which job. Did George drive the tractor because he was old? Or did he throw bales because he was a man and presumably stronger than Mama? (This was also a debatable point). When Pa came home, all was well and everything returned to normalcy.  

George and his own 10-12
pulling a two bottom plow

George appears in numerous photos and home videos, especially in the early years, turning his hand at a variety of farm tasks. He is around driving a tractor on the plow, he is there tuning up machinery, he is on the tractor moving wagons around, and a million other things. But he is best known for his love of threshing. Walking through the field of shocks, you always know where George did his work. He preferred building long narrow shocks. 

“Threshing Icon” we have heard him called. He spends his summers traveling around from show to show getting in free by displaying either a lawn mower, or some small items such as a “hand operated fork lift,” which was actually just an ordinary fork. He always slept in his car rather than pay for a camping space and gear. His crisp, white shirt and sharp, wide brim, black hat can be seen pictured in numerous newspapers pitching bundles into the separator or stranding atop the machine surveying the operation. Beware the misspelled name. “Can’t these guys spell? What’s the matter with them?!” There he is, newspaper in one hand glasses in the other. Spread on the table we can see a nice photo of George, looking dapper and pitching bundles. Below the photo reads something like “George Hofman pitches hay” at such and such a show. Short one “f” and short one “n”, not to mention it is usually oats or wheat and definitely not hay. Long ago at the Union Thresheree, George coaxed Mama up on to a bundle wagon, and he showed her the proper way to pitch bundles into the operator. Heads first so it all threshes out neat and clean with no stress to the machine. Years later, he taught me how to do the same by continually ordering me around in his usual way. “Heads first! You hear that?! Too fast! Too slow!” Now I can humbly say that I pitch bundles better than most due to my strict teaching. I can tell just by the sound it makes if a bundle has gone in sideways or in reverse.

Right to Left - George, Pa, and my cousin Nathan 
threshing with George's John Deere thresher 
in the summer of 1990

Threshing at home, George oversees the tractor and helped to make sure the thresh machine was set up

correctly. Everything leveled right, greased up, and the belts all put on the right pulleys with twists in them where there should be. On a clear day you could hear his curt instructions from the house as he and Pa set up the separator. If one thing can mess up a threshing operation, it would be running the machine backwards. Though it doesn’t put the grain back on the straw, it can sure jumble things up in a hurry, sometimes even sending straw out where the grain should come out. What a mess. This occasionally still happens at shows, but either George or Pa are usually there to set things to rights again.

George is one of those people who have had a larger influence on me that he might ever realize. One never knows when they might need a highly developed skill of bundle pitching. I think of him every time I slice up a pizza with my freebie, insurance company pizza wheel, every time I cook out with that barbecue set he got for me, and every time I need a girl needs to hand it back to someone who might be badgering her a bit. For all these things I am grateful.