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Harvesting in Southern Illinois
David McCain Farming has changed considerably in the last seventy years. Formerly, people used steam powered engines and a lot of manpower. In the 1920s there was no fertilizer, lime, pest controls, or ammonia nitrate to help grow crops. There was no big hydraulic equipment. On the other hand, farm families were usually much larger; everyone pitched in to do field and house work. Horses and mules were harnessed to plows, cultivators, and harvesting equipment. Most farmers practiced subsistence farming, raising enough to support their families. In some years farmers had surplus to sell, and profits were used to purchase better equipment. Commercial farmers of today often sell everything or reinvest field crops into meat-producing animals to be mar-
keted. Rarely do they, as their grandfathers, raise practically everything that goes on the family's table. Howard Richardson, who grew up on a small farm in Northern Township, Franklin County, remembered it this way: Subsistence farming is raising just enough to get you through the year selling practically nothing. My father never had a thought about selling a bushel of anything he raised. If by chance he had a good harvest, he might have twenty-five or thirty bushels of corn to sell ... if we raised enough food to get us through until the next year. I doubt very much if we ever put out more than forty acres during the time my dad lived. That was in spite of the fact there were nine of us boys. Different crops were raised in the first decades of the twentieth century. Richardson continued: The only row crops we ever planted was corn. I don't remember any soybeans. Later in my upper teens I remember some beans planted for hay. We broadcast them, too. We harvested them just as they began to turn ripe. If you let them get very brown, the stem would get too tough for the cows. Then we would rake them in windrows, and with our pitchforks we would put them into little piles where they would be cured a little better. Then we would go out in the field with a low flat bottomed wagon and our pitchforks. Somebody would be on the wagon and somebody on the ground, and we'd haul it to the barn. Then we'd throw it up into the loft. Hay beans disappeared, he said, replaced by red-top hay. It grew up high with a seed head that was red with very small seeds. Sometimes we would stack it, and a threshing machine would thrash it just like wheat and oats. With the threshing machine was another machine that was fifteen feet long with a big blower on it. A great wide bell ran from a big wheel on the separator to a big wheel on the steam engine. The steam engine had a big boiler that held a lot of water. They used wood and coal for fuel. The operator of the machine would have to get there early in the morning to start his fire and build up steam. A gauge told him when it was hot enough. Harvesting in the early 1900s was hard work, but Richardson said neighbors helped each other. There were quite a few people involved in harvesting—so many you could hardly believe. We would harvest the wheat and oats out of the shocks. We sowed it in the fall with no fertilizer except manure. We would cut the oats and wheat before they got really ripe, in the 'dough' so to speak. This means that you could squeeze the seed. and white dough-like material would come out your fingers. We would leave it in the shock. Then the binder was used. This was a heavy machine that took three horses. This binder had a kicker which worked when enough wheat came up on the canvas. It had a knotter which pulled a string around this bundle of wheat and tied it. Then the kicker would trip and knock the bundle off. Two or three men would put the bundles into shocks with the tops up, about thirteen bundles in a shock, and the last bundle was called a top. The head would be spread into two parts over the shock; this we called the cap key. This would knock off the rain. If the weather permitted, the wheat or oats would be cured in about two weeks. Next would be the arrival of the steam engine and separator. "Oh, how the kids would listen for that old steam engine to come down the road," Richardson recalled with fondness. When we could first hear it, we would run out to the road. 'There it is!' There was also a thrashing ring. This meant that all of the farmers in a certain area would help one another until the harvest was over. For example, they would come to our house to thrash, and mother would prepare a meal for them. It would take the owner of the thrasher and three or four men out in the field with pitchforks to load the shocks on a flat wagon. Others would be busy hauling the bundles to the thrasher while even more men would work to feed it and haul off the grain for storage. Corn shucking, in contrast to the big combine which picks and shells the corn in the field and transfers it to a waiting truck, was also hard hand labor. Gail Sneed, who grew up on a farm in Ewing Township, Franklin County, recalled his experiences. We used shucking pegs. One style was used for fingered gloves and another was for mittens. With the peg you would pull the shuck down away from the ear. The other hand would pull the other side of the shuck off. The wagon was on your right side if you were right-handed. According to Sneed, horses pulled the wagon. You would get up early in the morning, before daylight. The lantern would be on your arm as you went to the barn, and you'd feed and curry your horses before you went to breakfast. After getting the harness on, you'd go to the house for a nice breakfast. After breakfast you'd hitch the horses to the wagon and get to the field just before it got light. The horses were trained so they would move when you spoke to them. Sometimes they would move a little too fast lor you, and you'd have to yell 'whoa.' Another harvest added special flavor to the farm family's meals. Sneed recalled that: We grew what we called sorghum cane. It was a sugar crop. It was similar to our milo today but much taller, and we used the stalk. The leaves were bitter. We cut them off in the field. This we did with gloved hands by stripping the leaves off. Then we'd go through with a corn knife and cut those stalks oft and lay them in piles. Then we'd come in with a wagon with a hay frame on it, and we'd haul all those piles to the sorghum mill. One man made all the sorghum for the community. Today's farming has changed a lot since the days of Howard Richardson and Gail Sneed. Many are thankful that they do not have to farm the way they did in the 1920s.—[From Eighth Grade Class, Ewing-Northern School, interview of Howard Richardson, Mar. 25, 1985; and Gail Sneed, Mar. 27, 1985.]
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