Wheat Harvest ‘09

  

Howdy friends and neighbors.  Wheat harvest ‘09 is in the bin!  We finished about mid week last week as did a lot of other folks in this part of the world.  Yields were off this year but at least there was some yield.

 

This year we at the Tucker farm continued on with a tradition that started back when my Granddad and Great Granddad Tucker were involved in a harvest crew that used a stationary thrashing machine.  It was the kind of machine that was powered by steam tractors, and then later gas or diesel tractors, that were connected by the long, flat belt.  The wheat was bundled in the field and then pitched into a wagon that hauled it from the field to the thrashing machine.  There the bundled wheat was pitched into the throat of the trashing machine where the grain was separated from the straw and chaff.  The grain was either sacked in 100 pound burlap sacks, lifted onto another wagon and hauled out or ran onto a wagon with short sides and hauled out.  They would either take the grain to town to sell it or back to the barn to store it for seed or to sell at a later time.  Either way it had to be scooped or lifted off the wagons into the barn.  From the stories I heard it was hot, dirty and long work.  A far cry from pressurized, air-conditioned cabs with finger tip controls, belly dumps, power lifts, and powered augers.  Yet the job was the same as it is today.  You still have to get the wheat from the field to town as quickly as you can.

 

The story that granddad always told us was that they wore their old straw hat during harvest because the work was dirty and it stuck to the hat due to sweat, grease, or the water they soaked it in to cool off.  The hats got stomped and thrown when the thrasher broke down, a wagon lost a wheel, or the kids put frogs in the drinking water.  A lot like today when a combine circuit board fries, the A/C quits working, the truck blows a tire or the kids put frogs in the ice chest.  When the last bundle of wheat for the year was separated the entire thrashing crew would line up and throw their old nasty straw hats into the thrasher.  This was the true signal that harvest was over.  Then the guy who owned and operated the thrasher would buy the crew new hats for the rest of the summer and the next harvest the new hat would meet the same fate as the old ones did.

 

My Granddad continued this tradition when he got his own pull-type combine and then again when he got a self-propelled combine. One of my favorite memories of harvest with my Granddad was laughing as he would toss his old hat into the header of the combine.  We would watch the hat disappear into the combine and then would run to the back where we would watch with anxiety as we waited to see if the combine would spit it out.

 

My dad got to continue the tradition with my four-year old son last week.  Dad, Mason and I all tossed our old straw hats into the 200 horse power, turbo charged combine.  The main thrashing cylinder was spinning about 1100 rpms as our hats were sucked into the feeder house.  We all laughed as our hats were spit out the back of the machine.  Mason’s hat was crumpled and flattened.  My hat is more like a sun visor now as the combine separated the brim from the crown.  And PaPa’s hat…is still missing in action.  We figure it will make a nice home for the pack rats that invade the combine this winter.

 

I may never have a penny to my name, but I’m so lucky to be part of a tradition that has now been passed down five generations.

 

I’m Monte Tucker, and that is what’s under my newly converted convertible sun visor hat, perfect for the lake this coming holiday weekend.