Finley Urquhart Combine

"Harvest, as we know it, was totally different back in the early 1900's, when my great-grandfather first started farming in the Lind area.  Large teams of mules and horses were used to pull the threshing machines.  His first mode of threshing wheat was with an old threshing outfit that required around 100 head of stock and 30 men to operate.  They would do the heading during what is now our harvest season.  They would start threshing the wheat around September.  Heading meant cutting the heads off the stalks of wheat with a header.  Then it would go up a spout into a wagon.  It was then dumped and stacked like wheat hay.  Later it would be threshed.  Threshing season would take a good six weeks. 

The squirrels and rabbits were a terrible problem for the farmers.  Over the years numerous rabbit hunts were held, with men gathering in large groups and covering several sections of land at a time, shooting all the pesky little critters in sight.  My father, Bill Phillips, can remember when he and brother, Bob, were youngsters their father, Hugh Phillips, would send them out into the fields on horseback to poison the squirrels with strychnine-treated wheat.  For every tail off a dead squirrel they could produce, they were paid a penny per tail."

Sherry Lund, "From Sagebrush to Satellite" 1988

Kanzler and Koch threshing outfit 

In 1901, the wheat crop in the Lind area averaged 25 bushels per acre with a price of $.42/bushel. 

Team of mules at harvest
 

"Harvest time on the ranch was pretty exciting to me during the years when I was six to eight.  My father, V.S. Phillips, had nearly a hundred horses and mules, plus cows and hogs.  Mother kept chickens and turkeys.  All those beasts and fowls attracted flies.

Wheat harvesting time was usually in September, after the ripe wheat had been cut and piled in stacks over the fields.  Counting the harvest crew, plus men to start the fall ploughing and seeding, Dad had a crew of 25 to 30 men.  Meals for these men were provided by two cooks in a long cookhouse that could be pulled to any desired location.  Breakfast was from five to five-thirty, dinner at noon and supper around 7 p.m.

These women had a routine that fascinated me - a fly drive.  Just before the men came in to settle down around that long table the two women would arm themselves with layers of newspaper in each hand, start side by side in the rear of the long room and fan hordes of flies ahead of them out the door and, hopefully, back to the creatures that had attracted them to the area.

It helped a great deal, but no meal was ever fly free.  Now we go into a tizzy if one fly is in the house."

Georgia Hays, "From Sagebrush to Satellite" 1988 

Stacked wheat in the field

This photo courtsey of Helen Hughes

Harvest Scene Adams County

All photos on this page courtesy of the Adams County Historical Society,
except where acknowledged

Page 3

Go to pages 1 / 2 / 3 / 4