Poem Recalls The By-Gone Days Of The Old Threshing Machine

(For those too young to remember, a threshing ring was composed
of a group of neighboring farmers who hired a threshing machine and
operator to visit each farm and harvest the grain. All the farmers
in the ring would assist in the process with the wives of the group
providing the meals and refreshments. It also was a time for the
youngsters to get together and play and sometimes assist with the
work.)

Neighbors in the group included Charles Plummer (Mrs.
McEckron’s dad), Don Minnich, Delmar Huffman, Cary Roush,
Leander Morrison, Rue Long and William Wolfgang, now all
deceased.

The father of Chester Huffman (who is now a dentist in Hartford
City) did the threshing.

Mrs. McEckron says she can still remember the girls of the
families and they included the two Roush girls Helen and Ruth and
her sister Esther. They enjoyed watching the work in progress and
she remembers the teasing they took from Chester.

Among the playful sport was the throwing back and forth of a
ball to Chester and once the four girls agreed to get a piece of
coal and roll it in grease and throw it to him. Mrs. McEckron
reported that he caught it and the girls ran to the house!
‘Anyway,’ she reports, ‘it was fun while it
lasted!’

When the wheat and the oats are golden yellow
And the combines are out ‘Doing their thing’,
Just how many of us can remember
The days of the the old threshing ring?

I can still see that big old steam engine
As it slowly came puffing up the lane:
Pulling behind it the large separator
That soon would be threshing our grain.

Then along would come the teams and the wagons
And from the fields all the sheaves they would bring:
Yes, we even had a boy to bring us water
In the days of ‘The Old Threshing Ring.’

Then, at noon, Mom would call us all in for dinner
To a big meal that was fit for a king:
And even though she didn’t pitch any bundles
She had her place in ‘The Old Threshing Ring’.

When all the wheat and the oats were in the granary
And we had a big straw-stack back of the barn:
The ‘Old Huber’ and its separator
Would pull on down to our neighbors’ farm.

When the threshing in the ring was all over
Then at someone’s house, we would meet:
To settle up our account with the thresher
And have all the ice cream and cake we could eat.

But today, the story is quite different
And no more do we hear ‘the whine and the sing’
Of the big belts on that ‘Old Huber’ thresher
Back in the days of ‘The Old Threshing Ring’.