The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1897-10-20
CITY MAN IN THE COUNTRY.
Farmers MILK I'm the Old Way, But
Everything Else IL Modern.

we WHO i've IN Cne cities never KNOW
about the country. We imagine that we
are the only ones who get the advan-
tages of modern inventions, and that
the farmer plays around in the mud
the same as he did when we were boys.
why, l learned more during those
two days on the farm than l ever ex-
pected to know about farming. Now,
you helped to thresh when you were
boy. did, know. can't date back
to the time when the men used to
cradle the grain and then beat it out
with fails, but happened along in the
time of the reaping machines. The self
binder hadn't come in yet We used
to thresh the grain with one of those
horse power separators that you could
hear two miles away when it got to
grinding. You know the kind, l sup
pose-five Or six teams of horses going
around on the power and man up on
the big cogwheel platform in the CEN
ter cracking a whip over them. That
kind of a machine was horse-killer
and no mistake. 1t took about five
minutes of digging to get started and
it was hard pulling all the time. Then
if the feeder happened to let wet
sheaf get in crosswise the cylinder
would stick and every horse would go
up in the air. You probably remember
that when the traction engine came in
everyone said that it was the final i'm
provement. 1t knocked out so much
grain that the separator had to be fed
| from both sides-two hand cutters, two
men to put the grain into the wagon
and three or four men to stack the
straw. Did you ever work at the tail
end of the machine as they used to
call it? Had to wear goggles, you know,
Chaff flying so thick that it got in your
ears, nose and mouth, down your back,
sticking to you and tickling wherever
you were wet with perspiration, which
was everywhere; straw piling uparound
you and threatening to bury you unless
you worked your way out; sun about
90 and no shade! And yet the agricul-
tural papers used to wonder why boys
left the farm!
"Well. when l was at EZra's 1 went
over with him to look at an improved
thresher. l wouldn't have believed it.
|
end of the machine any more. In
stead of the old-fashioned straw car
rier, with it's belts and Stats, the i'm
proved separator is provided with
blower shaped just like big smoke
stack, and all the straw and chaff is
forced through this by powerful fans.
This blower carries all the dust and
chaff away from the machine. In the
old days you couldn't see the machine,
for cloud of dust surrounded it. But,
as 1 started to tell you, there are no
men on the strawstack any more. That
big blower swings around and distrib-
utes the straw, making a good semi
circular stack. There are no men at
the other end of the machine, either.
The Irvine bands are cut by patent
cutter, and the sheaves are carried to
the cylinder by an automatic feeder.
All the men have to do is to pitch the
sheaves up on the platform and the
machine does the rest. After the oats
are threshed out they are carried to the
top of the machine, weighed and meas
ured and dumped into the wagon. All
that the man at the wagon has to do
is to keep the grain scooped away.
"The way that grain comes out is
caution. 1t takes very few minutes
to fill wagon. AS matter of fact,
about the only labor in threshing nova
days is the hauling to and from the
machine. You can probably remember
the time, Miller, when 1000 bushels was
considered a big days threshing; but
| understand nowadays they can knock
out $500 to 1000 bushels. If they could
only invent some device to keep grain
at good price they'd be all right,
wouldn't they?"
cts remarkable" said Miller. 81
didn't know that the machinery had
been improved to that extent"
Its the same with most kinds of
farm work." said Goodwin. Ezra was
showing me his haystacker. 1t seems
that there isn't much pitching any
more. And you know how they plant
corn now, don't you? l don't, but l
understand you don't have to pull
lever to drop the corn. They've got
everything now except corn husker,
but Ezra says that man wants to sell
him one for this fall, so if GO back
next year Ezra will probably be sit
| ting in the house reading paper, while
the machine is out husking his corn.
Yes, everything's different. Ezra'swife
did her cooking on a gasoline stove.
The wind pump draws the water, and
believe it works the churn, too. They
milk the cows in the old-fashioned way,
but that was about the only thing 1
recognized. Chicago Record.