The Threshing Bee

The WHAT ????? Jimmy said when I said we were going. He chose to stay home with Schaffer's wife so Jim and I went. That means Jimmy gets to see it via the blog just like everyone else.

I woke up at 6a.m. as usual (3a.m. in Alaska) took a shower made my first officially cooked meal in the RV rather than opening something or eating to go. 3 eggs, sausage, toast, milk, coffee, and grapes later I went for a walk around town. Now telling you all the changes I noticed wouldn't mean a lot since you cant compare what is with what was and see what isnt. Right? I mean, like, the old really cool brick bank building is now a hunting lodge and the bank left that cool building for a modern wooden frame box. The newspaper is in the old thrift store, stuff like that. Oh, and since we're on the subject Swine Robotics is still in the same building.

The WHAT ???? Swine Robotics is a company that builds machines to insiminate pigs. I'll let your imagination chew on that one for awhile. LOL

I had coffee again at the D&M cafe, met a waitress named Shawna who was impressed with me from being from Alaska. So everyone that came to pay she would say he's from Alaska and they would all give her that woop-de-doo look like SO????? She would roll her eyes and look at me like dont they get it your from Alaska. LOL

I saw the Schaffers truck at thier church and so went in and attended thier service. They are Luthren which (in thier case) was very structured (every word and response was read from a book) not good, not bad, just different.

Then Jim (Schaffer) and I went to the Threshing Bee. Here's a video of an old Threshing Machine operating so my explanation will be understood better.

basically Threshing is separating the wheat from the chaffe. In old days it was done by hand by tossing wheat or ?? into the air a bit and letting the wind blow the light chaffe away while the seeds fell to the ground.
In this video is an old (powered by a long belt from a tractor) Thresher and they are loading it with wheat.

The men put the harvested wheat on the conveyor, the seeds fall into the green wagon to be ground and used for feed or ?? later. The straw comes out the end and is used for bedding for the animals.

They had a really neat display of stationary engines which are engines that operate other things via usually a belt. They are called staionary because they are mounted in place as compared to say that tractor that could move around.The have a heavy flywheel thus only fire every 50 - 100 revolutions just to keep up the centrifical force.

And some old tractors

this one actually runs. I saw a lot of very well kept  (mechanically) old tractors that ran very well but looked like this.

This home-made steam operated one is no longer used but only because they dont trust the tank to hold the pressure

This horse drawn wagon had Grandpas Schoolbus painted on the side. It hauled people around the area including out into the neighborhoods.

What do you do if you have a team of horses but no wagon and need to move stuff.

Farming is all about ingenuity, using ones mind to overcome obstacles placed in your way.

It was a fun day, lots of exibits and fun stuff to watch. It was really intersting to watch them make a 3/4 inch braided rope from small mylon strands. Watching a dog herd sheep from whistled commands was really cool, watching teams of horses pull a plow like our ancestors had to do. And the slow tractor race, that was also fun, they had a really good German lunch that I cant remember, something like knepel and a desert called coogan. I had apricot.

Jimmy and I are having fun in Leola, and plan on staying a week or so. Then I guess i'll head down to Mt. Rushmore and see that as well as the needle and another rushmore, that is partially done, of an indian on a horse, maybe the corn palace where the entire building is made of corn, the murals on the upper outside walls are redone yearly with colored corn.

Of course if this was a current sign rather that an ancient one this traveling would be a lot more affordable. But I am having a ball and enjoying every mile. I'm getting into the slow down and smell the stuff version of traveling that Ashleigh pushes and seeing it is much more fun that rushing here and there then waiting for some more money. As my card says

I have no time of departure,

no time of arrival,

and no destination.