Written By John Caverhill
A few weeks ago, I took a trip in time at three-quarters of a century, and I did it not by time machine but by car, to Jeremy Robson’s farm a short distance north of Melrose. Jeremy is a noted collector and researcher of farm machinery and methods going back to pioneer times. One of the gems of Jeremy’s collection is a Case threshing machine, and it was the star of the show at Jeremy’s farm on a Saturday afternoon in July. Watching this machine in action took me back to the mid-1950s when it was nearing the end of a long, successful career. It was owned by Cameron Rose, the last custom thresher in this area.
The average farm in those days had only fifteen to thirty acres of grain, and a single farmer couldn’t afford an expensive machine that would be used only one or two days a year. The solution was to hire a custom thresher who travelled from farm to farm. A typical thresherman’s outfit consisted of himself, a helper, a large-capacity threshing machine and tractor, and a pickup truck for carrying gasoline, lubricant and maintenance tools and supplies.
Besides Cameron Rose, I remember Jimmy I. Campbell (Jimmy I.) who retired in the late 1940s. Threshing machines with their large work crews were being replaced by combines that required one or two people to do the same work. Cameron Rose continued into the mid-50s when he, too, retired, ending the era of the custom thresher in our locality. Cameron had a big Case thrashing machine powered by a Waterloo tractor. Each year he followed a route that minimized time and distance between each farm. Hanging over a custom thresherman’s head, like the sword of Damocles, were the weather and the time schedule. The threshing schedule lasted several weeks so ideally the first threshing started no later than the last week in July and concluded in September. Only unavoidable delays such as weather were acceptable; both the thresherman and his customers followed mutual obligation to avoid unnecessary delays. During the offseason the tractor and threshing machine were overhauled so they were both running like new for the next season.
The farmer’s commitments were equally demanding. Several men and wagons were needed to keep the big thresher running steadily. Two men feeding sheaves into the machine soon emptied a wagon and as it was pulling away another wagonload was moving into place so there was little interruption between loads. Additional help was needed to load the wagon and also to handle the threshed grain. If a farmer was part of an eight-man threshing bee group, this meant seven threshings besides his own to attend. This, in turn, required that his own grain be all cut and stooped before the thresherman arrived in his neighbourhood.
As more farmers bought combines it became more difficult to field a crew for the remaining threshing bees. I helped a couple of neighbours in the mid-50s just before Cameron Rose retired. Watching him line up his big tractor and belt to the thresher was watching a professional at his best. In twenty minutes, everything was set and ready to go. With the tractor idling, Cameron walked around the slowly-running machine listening and checking that all was running smoothly. Satisfied, he nodded to us and as the first wagonload pulled up, he opened the tractor’s throttle and the machine came to life, ready to start devouring sheaves as quickly as they were fed onto the conveyor and clawed into its open jaws.
Watching that big Case thrashing machine in action once again took me back to that long-ago September day when I was forking oat sheaves onto that same conveyor. The huge combines of today, that in one pass around a hundred-acre field can thresh as much grain as was done in a day’s work by a whole crew and the threshing machine, are marvellous examples of modern technology but the old threshing machines had a colour and charisma that their modern descendants lack. They were the queens of the harvest and each queen set up court in one place while their loyal attendants rushed to feed them and meet their every need.
