Many years ago, farmers would harvest their small grain crops using a binder and threshing machine.  This activity is being kept alive for the later generations by actually harvesting some of the grain with equipment that has been kept in operating condition over the years.

Robert Wilshusen had a field of 7 acres of oats that was used for this purpose in July of 2002.  The binder that was used belongs to Melvin Oelrichs and several of the club members worked to shock the oats bundles to allow them to further ripen and dry in preparation to be threshed with a threshing machine.  This was mostly an all day event, including instructions for standing the bundles on end in shocks, making repairs as needed to the binder, and in general having fun reminising on how it used to be done.

The following pictures are of some of this activity.  The weather was a typically warm Missouri summer day, with the temperature in the low 90's and the humidity pretty high too.  This required some pauses to satisfy the worker's thirst with cold water.

To see a larger view of any of the pictures, select the picture and the larger image will be displayed. All of these pictures were taken on July 5, 2002.