Portable steam engines begin to power a few threshers. From the 1860s through the 1870s 12. Portable steam engines are used increasingly for threshing in the East, Midwest, and South. Barn threshing is preferred on smaller farms in the eastern and upper southern parts of the U.S. where mows are large enough to contain the straw. Bundles are stored in the barn and threshed there during the fall and winter.
Grain is stored in barns but also in separate granaries.
In western parts of the Midwest, farmers increasingly rely on custom threshermen, who hire their own crews and who rely on farmers' labor less and less. Vast farms in California call for bigger and bigger machines. Straw-burning engines are the machines of choice where fields are large, coal and wood are hard to come by, and there is more straw than needed for livestock. Threshers with a vibrating mechanism gradually edge out the endless-apron models. From the 1870s to the Turn of the Century 19.