Farm shows and demonstrations are one of the most coveted staples of small town recreation, and a pair of local friends recently set up an interesting demonstration of a piece of classic farm equipment for friends and family to see.
Brett Bartholomew is a 27 year old local resident who does cash cropping and custom spraying. His friend Brad Johnston purchased a threshing machine in 2019 to participate in the Guiness Book of World Records event that took place in St. Albert that year.
On the Labour Day weekend earlier this month, Brad and Brett set up the threshing machine on Brett’s farm as a demonstration. They had planted three acres of barley to get use out of the threshing machine at harvest time. “We purchased a grain binder in Hammond, Ontario and drove to Pennsylvania to source parts for it,” said Brett. It wasn’t a lot of work to set up, and with friends and family helping we were able to cut, bind and thresh the three acres in a few hours.”
The pair spread the word around to their family and friends about the demonstration, and had multiple drop ins throughout the day. While this year’s demonstration only lasted one afternoon, next year they are planning to do it again and spread the word more thoroughly so that more people can watch. “My grandfather loved seeing it, he remembers doing it back in his day,” Brett added. “To some, it may seem like a lot of work but to us, it let us step back in time and live a little in the past.”
A threshing machine or a thresher is a piece of farm equipment that threshes grain – that is, it removes the seeds from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out.
“They did this for fun, just to relive what it was like back in the day before combines were around,” added Brett’s mother, Tammy Cinnamon.
This was certainly a blast from the past fit for a farming community!