Threshing Day

IT was July 1938. Dad and I hitched Maud and Pearl, our team of matched Belgian mares, to the grain binder, and pulled it out of the storage shed. The humped-back machine needed some repairs. The canvas conveyor belts needed slats riveted, both on the platform where the cut grain would fall and the elevator canvas that carried the cut grain over the hump and dumped it into the bundle-gathering arms where it was collected and tied. The tying mechanism was metal fingers. They tied the bundle knot and cut the twine. This was the only precision unit on the binder, and the most finicky. We oiled the machine, sharpened the sickle sections, and examined the guards. Then, the team pulled the binder to the wheat field, where we removed the tongue from the end of the binder and positioned it on the side for operation. Finally, we lowered