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.”