Threshing from the stack
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Photo courtesy of the Manitoba Agricultural Museum. Given the heavy coat the young fireman is wearing, the Black Family is threshing late in the fall.
By Alex Campbell
Director, Manitoba Agricultural Museum
In the fall of 2014, Mr. Bruce Black of the Brandon area let the Manitoba Agricultural Museum copy negatives of photographs taken on the Black farms in the Brandon area. The Museum was able to digitize the images taken from the negatives. The image here shows threshing from stacks on one of the Black Family’s farms sometime around World War I and contains a wealth of details.
The separator has been pulled up between two stacks and is being fed from the two stacks. As well, there is third stack on the right hand side of the image with someone pitching sheaves off this stack onto the middle stack where they are then pitched into the separator. A sheaf is just visible in mid-air at the left hand side of the roof.
There is a building visible somewhat behind and to the right of the separator. This building has had an addition added, given the unequal height of the roof lines. The lower building appears to have been constructed outof logs with the logs chinked, which would account for the horizontal streaks of alternate dark and light colors which are not equal in width. The building with the higher roof appears to be balloon frame construction sided with boards. The presence of buildings so close to sheaf or straw stacks is odd as fire was an ever present danger, particularly with a steam engine operating.
While the building could be a granary, it is thought not to be, due to the buildings size and the separator being some distance away from the building, indicating the threshed grain is being dropped into a grain wagon. If the farmer was using a wagon to haul grain from the separator to the granary, then the granary might as well be located a safe distance away from the thresher and steam engine. The buildings are more likely barns of some sort which could use a supply of straw in the barn yard. It was a common practice in the Pioneer era to turn cattle and hogs into a straw stack in order to feed the animals. There are accounts of hogs living through the winter in straw stacks.
Given the heavy coat the young fireman is wearing, they are threshing late in the fall, however no snow is yet visible on the ground. The engine is being fueled by straw.
In the very left-hand side of the image can be seen the corner of a straw rack, which was used to carry straw to the engine. Also visible on the left hand side of the image is a water wagon, which appears to have a square wooden tank. Above the left rear wheel of the engine is a steam injector with a hose running to the water tank. When the boiler required more water, the steam injector was activated. The steam injector features a venturi which turns a low pressure, high volume flow of steam into a high pressure, low volume stream of water, while pulling water into the venturi. As the stream of water coming out of an injector is at a higher pressure than the pressure in the boiler, the water is able to force its way into the boiler past a check valve. While many steam engines were fitted with high pressure pumps to feed water into a boiler, injectors were more common.However, injectors needed clean water and worked better when using cold water.
The portable steam engine is thought to be an American Abell. The American Abell company had its roots in the John Abell company, which was one of Canada’s earliest farm machinery manufacturers. John Abell was born in England in 1822 and, some 20 years later, immigrated to Canada. By 1845 he was in Woodbridge, Ontario, which was 20 miles north of Toronto, working for a wagon factory.
By 1847, Abell had set up a metal working shop. Abell had some mechanical aptitude and he soon built a lathe for his shop, followed by his own steam engine to power the shop. He went on to build plows and later, threshers. He began building portable steam engines in the 1870s, followed by a cross compound steam engine in 1881. A traction engine followed in 1886.
In 1897, inspired by the heroism of a piper in the Gordon Highlanders during a military action on the Northern India frontier, John Abell named his new threshing machine line “Cock O’ the North” for the tune the piper was playing. The trade mark of the company became a rooster on a stump and the Abell steam engines had a rooster cast into the smokebox door.
In 1902, with John Abell then in his 80s and with no family, the Abell Company was sold to a joint company owned by the Advance Thresher Company and Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company. The John Abell company was renamed American Abell, however the John Abell designs continued in production and the rooster trademark was retained. American Abell was rolled into the Rumely Company in 1912, when Rumely purchased the Advance Thresher Company and bought the share in American Abell that was owned by the Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company. Production was ended in the American Abell plant and the company passed into history. Today, Abell is one of the least known Canadian farm equipment manufacturers.
On Sunday, July 31, 2016, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and the Manitoba Agricultural Museum will host Harvesting Hope: a World Record to Help the Hungry. For more information on attending or how to participate please visit www.harvestinghope.ca.
