Threshing Machine
The threshing machine is a piece of farm machinery that combines four separate operations in one unit.
- Threshing
- Separating
- Cleaning
- Stacking the straw
Power for the machine was furnished through a long belt connected to a tractor power take-off pulley.
The threshing machine in front of you is an example of several such machines that served the farmers in southern Utah. The machines were privately owned by individuals or groups who contracted with farmers. As their grain ripened, the machine was moved into their field and operations set up. The thresher would move from one farm to another throughout the summer months until all the wheat, barley, oats, and sugar beet seeds were threshed out and put in gunny sacks.
The manpower for the threshing operation required a crew of five men who usually worked throughout the hot summer at this most strenuous job. Most of the workers were school teachers who, year after year, spent their off-teaching months working on the threshing crew.
Wagon or sled loads of grain or sugar beet shocks would be hauled to the thresher’s loading chute and pitched onto the conveyor belt. The machine did the rest.
The clean grain or seeds poured out of one spout, and under the supervision of a “sacker,” one-hundred-pound capacity sacks were filled. The “sacker” then sewed the tops closed. An acre of land produced up to fifty bushels of cleaned wheat. The chaff, or straw, was ejected from the thresher by a blower sending it through a twenty-foot cylinder to an area where it formed a huge stack. The straw was then used throughout the year as bedding for farm animals.
Eventually these threshing machines gave way to the combines which did a complete harvest in one operation.
This is located at the Heritage House Pioneer Center / Heritage Park / Museum at the Bradshaw House-Hotel at 85 South Main Street in Hurricane, Utah.
