Submitted by Ellen Knoernschild and Written by Edwin Knoernschild in 1959 when he was 85 years old. This is part one of a four-part series.
Wheat is one of the main crops grown here. The ground was plowed in June as soon as the previous crop was harvested. It was harrowed, then plowed and planted in October.
I remember my first day of plowing with a single moleboard walking plow, pulled by one horse. I walked behind holding the plow straight. Father got me and my brother started and came back at 10:00 with lunch and a glass of wine. I stuck it out all day; by evening I was very tired but proud of my accomplishment - I was 9-1/2 years old.
By the 1880s, few farmers still used a cradle for harvesting wheat, though a cradle had to be used for oats. The cradle was like a large scythe, with a wide cutting blade and a set of wooden fingers mounted above the blade to gather the grain and allow it to be laid in neat piles, ready to be tied into bundles by the older children with some of the longer straws. The bundles were stacked upright. This was called a shock.
After two weeks it was dried enough to thresh. The grain was beaten with a flail (a long and short pole with a chain connecting them) or tramped out with horses. The bundles would be laid in a ring about 25 feet in diameter. Horses were driven over it until the upper side was tramped out, then the bundles were turned over and tramped. The straw was raked off and the wheat and chaff were put through the wheat fan.
Later, binding machines cut the wheat and tied it into bundles, which were made into shocks.
The first threshing machines were horse-drawn steam engines. Custom machines went around to the various farms. The wheat bundles had to be opened and spread out before they could be fed into the machine. The grain came out one side of the machine, and the straw had to be spread and raked by hand. The straw was used as bedding for the cattle. A group of 7 or 8 farmers would help each other in a "threshing circle." Threshing required at least 5 men, but the day ended with a keg of beer provided by the farmer. The machine operator was paid by the sack. At first, the wheat was shipped in sacks by boat; when the railroad was built, the sacks were emptied into box cars. Later, wheat was hauled in bulk to the grain elevators in Augusta or Nona.
The combine did both threshing and binding. It was pulled by a tractor and shared by several neighbors. The grain went into a bin, and the straw out the back. In the 1950s, soybeans started to be grown and combines were modified to harvest them.
