Auburn, Iowa 51433
As a small boy the exciting things that happened on the farm
were threshing and haying, in that order.
I was born in 1938 on the farm that I now farm.
Threshing was still the way to harvest oats, wheat, and barley
when I was growing up in Sac County, Iowa near the small town of
Auburn.
August 19, 1984 threshing. Arlin Sigmon pitching, Bobby
Yttredahl on grain wagon, Phineas Blanchfleld on his 25-40
Allis-Chalmers. Larry Ludwig leaning on wheel.
I can still remember standing on the fence by the house and
looking down the road to see if I could see the first bundle rack
and team coming.
It seemed like on the day we expected to start our threshing the
first rack would get here about 2:00 pm, early enough for each rack
to get at least one load and maybe the first rack two loads before
it got too tough.
Then later, up the road would come the separator pulled by Frank
Bachman’s 10-20 McCormick-Deering. The separator was a
McCormick Deering 22-38 with a Hart feeder and weigher.
The lunches and dinners were also something to be remembered,
after washing up under the shade tree on the lawn from a wash basin
on a makeshift stand that only saw use about two days out of the
year.
It went along this way for a few years, and I graduated from
water boy to grain wagon attendant, to assistant grain hauler, and
on up to bundle hauler.
A neighbor boy and I ran a bundle rack together one season, and
then the next season I was on my own at 14 years of age.
If we got started before dinner I always pitched four loads a
day and sometimes five if I was the one to get to the field
first.
We very seldom had any extra pitchers in the field, but
occasionally the separator man would feel sorry for us young
fellows and pitch a load off for one of us.
A few of the neighbors dropped out of the company ring, and went
to combining. My Dad, J.C. Sigmon, and Ed Snyder wound up owning
the separator. It finally got down to just two families threshing.
It went all right till some of the older boys left the farm and on
to other things. When we were too short of help, that was when we
finally quit threshing. 1957 was the last year we threshed all our
grain.
The separator was a good one and always well maintained, it was
purchased new by a company of farmers, one of which was my
grandfather Henry Koppelman, about 1925. It was used every year
through 1957. Some of the tractors that were used to pull the
separator that I remember and worked around personally were a
McCormick-Deering 10-20, Farmall F-20, 1948 ‘G’ John Deere,
1950 ‘A’ John Deere, 1948 ‘Z’ Minneapolis-Moline,
and a 1951 ‘ZA’ Minneapolis-Moline.
The first two years that I farmed, I threshed my oats till we
were short of help.
In 1958 I purchased a used Minneapolis-Moline wire tie baler. It
was a good outfit, it made a good bale, worked good, but what a lot
of machinery on it compared to the square balers of today! Wire was
expensive and very little hay was stacked outside anyway so I
traded it off in 1959 for a New Holland Hayliner Super 78 twine tie
baler. That was really a slick baler.
My wife and I custom baled approximately 25,000 bales a year
with it for 19 years. I could always rebuild the knotters, but the
frame started to suffer from metal fatigue.
I then purchased a used New Holland Hayliner 275 baler at a farm
auction that we are still baling with.
We have a threshing bee here at the farm annually. We had our
fourth one in 1984. My wife and I cut and shocked about seven acres
of oats in 1984 for threshing.
We have a 22-36 Case separator that was manufactured in 1948. It
is in really good condition. We have used a 1951 ‘ZA’ MM,
77 Oliver, 20-35 Allis-Chalmers, and a 25-40 Allis-Chalmers on it
the past four years.
The ‘ZA’ MM is my tractor and one that Dad purchased
used in 1953, and used to thresh with. The Oliver belongs to Dave
Wernimont of Auburn, the 20-35 Allis-Chalmers is owned by Jack
Hensel of Auburn, and the 25-40 belongs to Phineas Blanchfield of
Lake City, Iowa.
This year we had our threshing on August 19. It was well
attended by spectators as well as volunteers to do the work. We
baled the straw pile immediately after we finished threshing.
I have a W-30 McCormick-Deering that I have just finished
restoring. We are going to use it to thresh with next year, but the
W-30 is another story.
