Old-fashioned Threshing Bee 5

Photographed at Jack Creek Farms, Templeton, Ca

Step back into a simpler time and connect with the past. Starting with standing wheat we will bind, stack, thresh, sack, clean and grind the grain into flour the same way it was done in the early 1900s.

What exactly is a Threshing Bee?

In early days wheat was flailed by hand. In America in the 1700s small round barns were built with special slatted flooring. Horses were trained to walk in circles on the wheat to remove the grain from the stalk. In the 1800s an exciting new piece of machinery, the Stationary Thresher, was introduced. This new piece of machinery could separate the grain from the stalk and husk, and assist in sacking.

Most farms were small and could not afford to purchase this new “high tech” equipment. Sometimes a “custom” thresher came to an area. Farmers paid a fee to the machinery owner to have their wheat threshed. Other times farmers pooled their resources to purchase a machine, and the machine was moved from farm to farm. Most farms did not have enough labor resources to do this manual labor themselves, so all of the neighboring farm families came to help. The men operated the thresher, pitched bundles, sacked grain and loaded wagons, while the women cooked and fed the crews.

Though the work was hard, this became a harvest celebration of sorts. It was a time of sharing. A time of socializing for young and old alike. These harvesting events came to be known as “Threshing Bees”.