Harvest Memories

s I tour around our province these last few weeks I see harvesting in full swing in the north and winding up in the south. I still get excited about harvest time even though we are retired now. I try to give a hand when my daughter and son-in-law’s harvest is starting, even if it’s only cooking meals or helping with chores. I want to feel like I’m still part of the season. Pulling the combine out of the shop seems to be the trigger.

Like many of my fellow farmwives, I used to drive truck to and from the combine and haul grain to the bins. Many of them ran the combine too, but I never did. There’s nothing like a beautiful harvest sunshiny day, and the smell of harvest in the air, but I loved the late nights too with the lights shining on the swath as the combine ate them up. We would turn on all the lights in the barnyard which helped us navigate through the dark from the field to the bins. The big old barn had lights on 3 sides way up high on the loft beams, which acted like a lighthouse while driving the truck in the hills and around the bush. Have you ever got lost in the field in the dark? Yes, I know you have too, and yes, we had lights on the truck. Disorientation just happens in the dark. So, we were glad of the well-lit barnyard that looked like a small village. We were grateful for the end of harvest too, and a job well done.

Going back another generation on this same farm, I remember harvest when I was a kid. Dad owned two threshing machines; a steel-wheeled Goodison at one time and later a Case rubber-tired model. Harvest looked a lot different back then. The teams and racks pulling up to the big threshing machine loaded with sheaves (bundles) of grain. Men with pitch-forks unloading into the feeder of that huge machine with its chain and belts driving huge wheels round and round, separating the grain, chaff and straw with its pounding, shaking and blowing. Moving its grain through the middle section and auguring it out the side into a bin and spewing fresh cut straw out the chute on the back into what would become a huge yellow straw pile. A couple of my brothers remember helping throw sheaves into the threshing machine and one commented that a pitchfork “may have” gone through the threshing machine when it slipped out of his hands.

My Dad was the threshing boss and he made sure the process ran smoothly. He would line up the tractor opposite the threshing machine, attach the belt, check all the other belts and chains, and made sure the timing was right for the teams of horses pulling racks of bundles to be lined up for unloading so the threshing machine never had to wait. There was no waiting. My Mom and our housekeeper were the chief cooks and they would feed the crew. In 1962 Mom would have 7 kids also to feed. This number would increase to 10 by 1966. The first supper setting would be for the kids before the men came in. At the second setting, she could seat 10 men. The crew would come in from the field for supper, and a wash basin, towel, soap and water would be on a bench outside the door, and each man would wash up hands and face, and file into the kitchen where Mom had a long table set up, plates spaced for men and they were served potatoes, gravy, vegetables and roast beef or pork, homemade bread and an iced cake for dessert. (Some of you readers know how many dishes had to be washed!) We were the last farmers in our district to still be threshing. It was such hard work for both Mom and Dad. They quit threshing (I’m guessing) in the mid-60s. I think of them every harvest season! Happy Harvest!