A few weeks ago, one of Farmer Gary‘s cousins sent us some photos from a century ago, hoping my husband could identify the relatives.

The cousin, Becky, is one of the daughters of Gary’s uncle/godfather Jim. She said the photos were from a huge Schum-family reunion some 40 years ago. There was a table piled high with photos. Copies of old black-and-whites were available to order, but they did not come with any identifying information.

Here’s one of them:

Gary recognized his mother’s siblings right away in the 1924 photo. His mom, Rita, wasn’t yet born. She was the youngest of the nine children.

The tallest lad in the photo is Alois, who was born in 1912. Sadly, his twin, Mary, was stillborn.

Next was Hilda, in 1914. Hugo arrived in 1915. Another sister, Henrietta, was born in 1917 but didn’t survive her toddler years. Irene was born in 1919 and youngest brother, Jim, in 1922.

Two more girls followed, Olivia in 1924 and Rita (Gary’s mom) in 1926.

As Gary finished identifying his aunts and uncles in the above photo, I pointed to what I thought was a haystack on the right side of the frame.

Well, come to find out that was not hay, but straw. My husband considered this a teaching moment.

In a nutshell, says Gary:

• Hay is for eating. Straw is for bedding.
• Hay is green. Straw is yellow. They have a different look, a different smell.
• Hay, which is cut grass, should be protected and stored in a barn (to prevent mold and rot).
• Straw is the leftover stalk of wheat, oats, or barley.

See the big opening in the Mehling’s barn, above? At harvest time (August), the threshing machine would be parked inside. A steam engine would be stationed 100 feet (or thereabouts, says Gary) away. The steam engine needs to stay outside, as it’s always belching smoke and sparks.

The two machines are then connected with a big drive belt, which will transfer power from the steam engine to the threshing machine. When the machinery is in position, the next step is to chock the wheels, so everything stays put.

Here’s a graphic of a threshing machine:

In case you were wondering, combines didn’t come into vogue until the 1950s. Nowadays, many farmers have their own combine (which combines the cutting and threshing process into one operation and one machine). Back in the 1920s, though, threshing was a group effort. And by group, we mean multiple local farm families, called “threshing rings.” The threshing machine and steam engine would move from farm to farm within the threshing ring, as would the family members.

Gary says it would take about 10 helpers from other farms to harvest the small grains crops at the Mehling farm. To keep the steam engine running, you’d need someone to haul water and another to keep the wood fire blazing. The rest of the crew would tend to the threshing machine.

Once the fire was hot enough, the steam caused pressure to build up to run the threshing machine. Inside the barn, helpers would pitch bundles of wheat, barley, or oats, already cut and gathered into shocks in the fields, into the machine.

You’ve heard the phrase “separate the wheat from the chaff,” right? This is where it comes from: as the grain separates from the chaff in the machine, it slides out in a chute, into burlap bags. Those bags, when filled, weighed about 100 pounds each. That would amount to one-and-a-half bushels of wheat, three bushels of oats, or two bushels of barley. The farmers hauled bags full of grain over to the granary building for safekeeping.

Meanwhile, the chaff and stalks went flying out of another chute, forming a mountain of straw outside the barn, behind the threshing machine.

And what of the womenfolk?

You guessed it – they were cooking up a storm to feed the team.

As Gary tells it, daily meals went like this: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Lunch, Supper, Lunch. What we now refer to as a coffee break or snack was another full meal, three lunches a day.

I asked Gary if he thinks farmers, as they moved on to combines and other labor-saving machines in the 1950s and ’60s, missed “the good old days,” or if the mood was more “thank heavens that’s over.”

He thought the farmers would have had mixed feelings about the new-fangled way of doing things. There was a camaraderie among the farmers during the annual threshing.

“But the women,” he chuckled, “I think they were thrilled not to have to cook those huge meals during the heat of late summer.” Apparently, it was quite competitive as to which farm in the threshing ring served the best meals (and the most pies).

What were the small grains used for?

Grandpa Mike took wheat into town to have it ground into flour. They used all three grains for chicken feed. Oats were used to feed the horses. Whatever wasn’t needed for the Mehling family was sold for “cash money,” according to Gary, or bartered.

So as to not leave them out, here’s a photo of the three youngest of the Mehling siblings, probably taken in the late 1940s:

All the Mehling aunts and uncles are gone now, but the stories of their lives on the farm will live on as long as Gary and his cousins combine their memories to share with younger generations.

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