Threshing

Farming is at full tilt at the moment and some grass fields are being cut for silage but we are not at the time of the year, yet, that this Canadian card depicts of "Threshing in Western Canada". Farmers would put together entire threshing crews to help with this chore. The picture looks to depict steam threshers. The steam thresher-man bought his steam traction engine and seperator to the farm to do the threshing. Farmers paid the thresher man a set rate per bushel of threshed grain, fed workers and helped out. This machine dominated the grain harvest from 1905 until the 1930s.

The card is one of the Stedman Brothers, a large publisher of central Canada and the Great Lakes postcards from 1908-1915. They produced a lot of these retouched cards. I like the almost painterly feel of this one.

It was sent to my Grandmother and says "I am sending you a PC or two. Hoping you like them. The weather is very severe here just now. Hope these PC find you in best of health as they leave me quite well. Yours truly, Abe". The family emigrated to farm in Canada and experienced some bad winters on arrival. One can only imagine the shock of Canadian winters to someone used to English ones. They got through these first winters with the help of neighbours and friends. I think this card would probably be sent about 1910.

I keep it in an album with this stamp

which is a 1930 20 cent stamp of harvesting with a tractor overprinted with the "World's Grain Exhibition & Conference, Regina 1933". By coincidence the family of the post card farmed in Saskatchewan. I wonder if they went to this exhibition. The event was supposed to take place in 1932 which was the 50 year anniversary of the founding of Regina but the great depression and the fall in grain prices meant that it did not take place until the following year. The exhibition hall was an important public works project providing work for those hit by the depression. In recent times the building stored agricultural products but it burnt down in June 2009.

To continue the harvesting theme here is my Great Grandfather farming in Lancashire, England where the Canadian family were from.

My Grandmother wrote on the back "Dad and Ernest on the Combine it threshes and cuts grain all in one operation, a change from when we started with oxen and then horses".