Vintage Wheat Ranching
Having a tough time texting or tweeting ? Think of the technology in agriculture that occurred during our grandparent’s lifetime! I’m Jeff Keane, after the break we’ll take a look at the history of wheat ranching. A few old timers remaining remember what it was like to harvest wheat with a team of horses, the rest of us can only imagine, right Susan? Jeff, I recently watched an old film of wheat harvest in the Palouse using a team of eighteen horses to pull a combine. The logistics alone of watering that many big horses on a summer day is mind boggling! The early 1800’s farmers relied on oxen but by the 1870’s large operations had switched to new labor saving devices; reapers, mowers, planters pulled by draft horses. Jeff, prior to any automation it took a wheat farmer three hours and forty minutes to harvest one bushel of wheat, by the late 1800’s using horses it took ten minutes. The threshing of wheat also changed over the course of the century. Originally, grain was separated by oxen and horses treading over it. Then technology progressed to early threshers powered by horses walking on treadmills. By the twentieth century, threshing was done with mobile steam engines. In 1892, the invention of the gasoline powered engine would make draft horses obsolete and leave in its wake a generation that lived to experience two very different kinds of horse power. To appreciate this story visit aginfo.net to view footage of harvesting wheat by horses. I’m Jeff Keane.
