Sunday was the annual summer threshing day at Carriage Hill Farm. If you have never seen wheat being threshed with a steam engine, you have really missed an impressive event. I've created a short video so that you can see and hear the process. Basically, a steam engine is used to drive a thresher via a long belt. Workers load dried wheat into the thresher where the wheat kernels are separated from the stalk. The kernels are drop into a bin that is emptied into a wagon while a conveyor piles the wheat stalks beyond the far end of the thresher where it is collected to be used as fodder for the farm animals.
Carriage hill uses a 6 horse power wood fired engine to power the thresher. A dedicated team of approximately 12 volunteers operate the engine and thresher, assisted by the farmer and his assistant.
The crew started in the morning and worked hard until lunch time. For lunch, the rest of the farm staff had prepared a traditional summer threshing meal for them to enjoy. They needed the energy because after less than an hour of rest, they were at it again until evening came.
I'll show you the threshing meal in another post. Meanwhile, enjoy the video and marvel at the hard work and ingenuity our ancestors employed to feed a growing nation.
tim mcmurdo 