The excitement actually began the evening before, early after tea, when a distant rattling and banging could be heard up the lane.
'Here they come.' Said Mrs. Pick, and out we all went to see the arrival.
The noise and clatter increased as the large threshing machine jolted down the lane, and turned into the gate, with a great deal of shouting and excitement. Swaying from side to side over the rough ground, it eventually came to rest in the stackyard alongside the stack which was to be threshed.
Much of the corn would stand over the winter in the stackyard before it was threshed, but some of it was needed now.
The engine was set up a yard or two in from of the machine, and a long belt stretched between them. When the engine was started, the belt moved slowly at first, then gather speed and whirred round with a great deal of vibration and noise. The big machine seemed to shake itself into action, and the clattering and banging which came from all parts of it must be heard to be believed!
The trial run over, the machine settled down for the night, and the two men who had brought it came in for a meal.
With some speculation as to tomorrow's weather we went to bed, ready for an early start in the morning.
The day dawned fine and bright, and in very good time the place was alive with men. A few of them I knew - Mr. Hicks and George; Mr. Ewbank from the farm up the lane; Eif Gatenby, and his dog; and the two men who had brought the thresher. But about half of them I had not seen before. The full team, I found, consisted of thirteen men - and one Land Girl!
From then onwards, the stackyard was as busy as the proverbial beehive, though with considerably more noise. The machine was started up, and throughout the day it kept up a continuous discord of bangs and clatters and rattles.
Someone went up the ladder into the top of the wheat stack, and began to fork down the heaved to the top of the thresher. This was like a big wooed platform with an oblong hole in it, down which could be seen two large metal drums which were revolving swiftly. Another man cut the bands and fed the sheaves into the drum, to be dealt with by the machine, which disgorged them finally in three directions.
At one end the corn poured out into sacks which were hung on large hooks. Three men were kept busy here, hooking new sacks on when needed, weighing the full ones, and carrying them to the tillage shed. A job which throws light on the saying 'can't carry corn' for it takes a really strong man to keep up this job without flagging. And to walk across the stackyard with a sack of corn across your shoulders is no easy thing. Wheat, barley, and rye were put in sixteen-stone sacks and oats in twelve-stone ones. This is about the only job that I can think of that I did not do while on the farm.
At the opposite end of the thresher, the straw was coming out in large bundles, and more men were forking it away and onto the cart to be taken into the fold. The third outlet from the machine was at the side. From this there poured a continuous stream of chaff, bits and pieces of straw, bits of weeds (especially thistles) etc. My job on this first threshing day was to gather as much of this as I could into a large square of sacking, sling it over my shoulders and hurry with it to the chaff-house in the barn. There I emptied it, and hurried back for more. By this time, of course, a huge mountain of chaff had collected. And so it went on, and on, and on, without a break except for meals. The faster I worked, the faster the stuff seemed to be blown out at me. It got in my clothes and shoes, and in my eyes, mouth and hair. And did it prick! To this day I never see a thrasher without feeling dusty, hot and uncomfortable.
We stopped for our 10 o'clock snack, and again for lunch, (eaten on the job) and I ate a huge slice of lovely homemade blackberry and apple pie, with a sprinkling of chaff which kept falling from my hair and shoulders!
By the end of the day the wheat stack was threshed, and half the oats, and I had just about managed to keep up with the chaff. The chaff-house was full as high up as I could reach, and the last bit was spread around in the stackyard for the hens. Chaff, by the way, was always pronounced 'Caff' as if it had no 'h'. I never found out why.
Mouser, our cat, and Eif's dog, were having a field day with the rats. I watched Eif's dog catch one, and roll over on his back with the rat cleverly balanced on his four paws, holding it there where it could not reach him with its teeth until he got it in the right position to kill it. Mouser could do this too, and they provided quite a side-show for us whenever we stopped work to eat.
When the machine finally clattered to a halt in the dusk, we trooped into the kitchen and sat round the long table where Mrs. Pick, Mrs. Hicks and Ruth had a huge meal ready for us. I believe I ate almost as much as any one of the thirteen men around the table with me!
With the meal over, most of the men left, and the machine lumbered onto the road and gradually faded into the distance, while peace returned once more to the stackyard and the fields, and I thankfully went to bed!
The following morning we cleared up the stackyard, and life returned to normal.
Later in the month we went out to Baldrence to help with their threshing, and still later to Ewbank's up the lane. Each time I did a different job, until I had been the rounds of all of them except carrying corn. I never carried the chaff again, and though all the other jobs were hard, I would rather do any of them than the chaff!
At Baldrence I forked the straw for a while, then went up on the stack with Mr. Hicks. From there I had a grand-stand view of the whole proceedings. When it was all over, I again sat down with a table full of men - twelve of them this time. Later in the month we went to help at Ewbank's farm. This time I was up on the straw stack, forking batons of straw to the man who was building the stack. I never discovered this man's name, but I will not forget him in a hurry. He wore a hat with a very large brim, like a cowboy's, and he wore blue overalls and had a blue and white spotted handkerchief knotted around his neck. He had another bright blue handkerchief, the corner of which he stuck in a back pocket, while the rest of it hung down behind him. But the best part about him was his outsize moustache. It was very long and well greased, and stuck out at least two inches beyond his cheeks on either side, ending in two really beautiful points! Several times during the day he got a bit of straw hanging over it, and as it was well outside his line of vision he didn’t know it was there, so I was entertained for some time before it fell off.
During a pause in the stacking, he pulled out a dirty old tobacco tin, opened it, and helped himself noisily to some snuff. Then he held it out and asked me to have some. I declined, with thanks.
'Go on,' he said, 'You ought to do some you know. You've got the right kind of nose for it.'
One threshing day in my second year at the farm, I was up on the cart, building a load of straw ready to take into the fold and stack in the barn. When the load was finished, I stayed on top, ready to fork the straw off at the other end.
The big doors into the fold were open, and the upper door, a kind of big wooed flap hinged at the top, was propped up with a tree trunk from the ground. Whether this had slipped since the last load I don't really know, bit when the front of the load was going through I realised that there was only a matter of three or four inches to spare between it and the top of the load. I dropped flat onto the load, and squashed myself as far into the straw as possible. And I just scraped under - the buckle of my belt scraped the bottom of the door.
Finally one day, I found myself doing a job I had not expected to do - on the thresher, cutting the sheaf bands and feeding the corn into the drums. Mr. Pick warned me to be careful not to get my hand into the huge revolving drums, as anything put in came out in pieces! I knew this to be true, because I had seen a large penknife dropped in by accident, which came out in nine or ten small pieces. Also I had found numberless bits and pieces of mice in with the chaff.
The top of the machine was shaking and dithering the whole time, so that it felt rather like the 'cake-walks' we used to enjoy in the fairground at Morecombe when we were children.
I liked this job, but had to work very quickly. Because, of course, the 'man' who fed the corn into the machine set the pace for all the others. If I had stopped, the whole proceedings would have stopped.
Mice were everywhere, thrown on top of the sheaves, and not able to get off. They ran in circles around the top, and occasionally across my feet. Sometimes they jumped out of a sheaf as I cut the band, and one ran up my arm and jumped off from there. When we stopped for a drink, I took off my jacket, and a mouse fell out from under the collar!