Thrashing Day

Thrashing Day

From the age of nine, I spent many holidays on the Morgan farm near Ripon, Wisconsin. Often they were day trips with Grandpa and Grandma Rogge, but once in a while I stayed for a week. Each visit exposed me to a way of life far removed from the one in my hometown, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

Thrashing day, the highest point of the annual farm routine sticks in my memory as a unique event. Maury was part of a cooperative that owned a thrashing machine. This equipment resembled a brontosaur in size and shape and likewise, faced extinction. By 1951 the practice of using large combines to harvest grains was creeping into the rural scene. Within a few years their use completely replaced the thrashing machine.

A combine completed the same work as the thrashing machine but with far fewer steps, much less time, and only one worker. These advances represented a huge advantage over the more labor-intensive procedures that Maury used. Sadly the combines did much to destroy the community spirit inspired by the day-long event.

Some called it threshing, others thrashing. Either way, it represented the harvesting process of wheat and was an annual tradition along Olden Road, east of Ripon. There, Ray Harms, the Zank brothers, Lawrence Beck and my Uncle, Maury, jointly owned their thrashing machine. It was not as efficient as a combine, but was far better than thrashing the wheat by hand. The use of the machine required considerable coordination.

The joint owners assigned a day to each member to use the equipment and penciled the date on the calendar. That meant that, well in advance of his assigned thrashing day, Maury needed to cut, bundle, tie, and stand the wheat bundles in shocks to dry. He determined the location for the straw stack and summoned all available help for the occasion.

When Maury's turn came, the machine was towed to his farmyard and positioned at an open spot at the south end of the barn where the cast off straw would form the straw stack. He parked his tractor next to it and connected its power take-off to the machine's drive shaft with a wide leather belt. The wagons were lined up and ready.

After their morning chores, neighbors and helpers from miles around descended on the farm to help in a joint effort. The women disappeared into the kitchen to help Maury's, Lois, cook the noon meal. Years of practice at similar occasions and church dinners had made them experts on the mechanics of feeding a crowd. The men began to pitch the grain shocks onto the wagons.

When the first full wagon arrived at the thrashing machine, the fun began. Maury started up the tractor and engaged the power take-off. The belt began its endless rotation and the relative calm of the country morning was replaced by incredible racket. The machine roared to life. Conveyors rolled, shakers shook, and the whole thing made a fearsome noise of metal on metal.

Thrashing was a practiced routine. Men forked the grain bundles onto the intake conveyer, they disappeared into the machine, and thrashing officially began. After considerable rumbling and shaking, straw and chaff emerged from the rear end of the beast. The machine blew it out of an adjustable spout onto the straw stack site. There, someone with a pitchfork distributed the accumulating straw in such a way as to construct a stable pile of the stuff. As the mound grew, that person began to rise above the rest of us. When the work was done, he had built a handsome straw stack.

The younger staff learned the jobs from the seasoned veterans. The chaff got under my clothes, in my hair and eyes, and itched something fierce. It was hot, sweaty, and dusty work. A jug of Kool Aid with a communal cup sat on the chopping block as a defense against thirst and dehydration.

We worked up a hearty appetite and at noon, Maury turned the tractor off. Everyone relaxed a bit, dusted the straw flecks off their clothes, and headed for the summer kitchen to wash up for the noon meal. The sudden silence was the signal to the women in the kitchen that their part of the show was about to commence.

While the men and the boys had been working, the women were busy preparing a feast to end all feasts. They had extended the kitchen table to the limit to accommodate the crowd and ancillary tables were set up to handle any overflow. Places were set and waiting. The crew had been working hard and was hungry.

The women had roasted twenty-five chickens with mountains of fresh vegetables and the smell was incredible. They peeled and mashed enough potatoes to feed an army. A gallon of hot chicken gravy waited. Fresh baked loaves of bread, still warm, were sliced and several pound-bricks of sweet creamery butter waited on the table.

As the men came in and found a seat, a brigade of women filled the serving dishes and passed them along the seated workers. The men helped themselves: No polite dab of potatoes here, these men ate heartily. Everything made a second trip among the diners and the women kept the dishes full of hot food. The fare was delicious and even more so because of the warm congeniality around the table.

For the finale, ten or fifteen freshly baked pies waited under clean dish clothes on top of the freezer. The women served up big slabs of apple, nesselrode, sour-cream raisin, or strawberry-rhubarb with a healthy dollop of vanilla ice cream. They had brewed coffee in giant boilers; so, steaming hot cups of java could be poured and savored with fresh, thick cream skimmed from the milkcans that morning.

Good-natured banter relaxed everyone. Ray Harms inquired about the progress of the Zank's piglets as he had spoken for two when they were ready to butcher. Lawrence Beck kept up a humorous line of conversation that had everyone laughing. When it was all over, men pushed their chairs away from the table and sat back to give the ingested food a chance to even out. The crew was a toothpick crowd and most chewed on one to help settle the meal. How anyone could actually go back to work after eating like they did, I do not know.

Sometimes, if there were too many to eat at one sitting, two shifts formed up. The first to eat were the thrashers and while the machine sat silent, the wagon crews had time to load two or three wagons ahead. When the thrashers finished eating, they had several full wagons to work on while the other half ate. The table was quickly cleared and reset between shifts of diners. Only after all the men ate and were back on the job, did the women relax and sit down to eat.

At the end of the day, the precious grain was collected, a new straw stack glistened neatly at the end of the barn, and neighbors got in their cars and went home to do the evening chores. Maury towed the thrashing machine to the next appointment, and the whole process repeated itself until all of the cooperative owners had processed their grain. Thrashing events had no counterpart in my hometown. For a city girl, thrashing day was a wonderful experience; it's one, I will never forget.