Celebrating our rural history - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

Seeing, in last week’s Citizen, that the featured tractor at this weekend’s 64th annual Huron Pioneer Thresher Reunion is Mike Courtney’s 1951 Minneapolis-Moline Model U tractor brought back memories for this old farm boy.

 

Growing up on a farm north of Lucknow, my family farmed with a Minneapolis-Moline R tractor, purchased in town from a franchisee of the brand. It’s been years since these tractors were used. In fact, the name disappeared in 1974 when the company was merged with another manufacturer.

 

Such is the case of most of the equipment that’s shown at the Thresher Reunion. As I look out my window these days, even the crops grown in the fields surrounding our country property have changed from when I was growing up. Back then, farms mostly grew wheat, oats and barley. There was a small amount of corn, grown mostly for silage for cattle. Farther south in Huron, white beans were grown, resulting in the first Zurich Bean Festival in 1966. When we first moved to our current home in 1975, our neighbour Robert Charter grew white beans on part of the farm to which our house was originally home.

 

Things have changed so much in farming since the days when a group of farmers gathered in 1962 in Blyth with the idea of starting a Thresher Reunion. Many of these men dated back to the time when steam tractors powered threshing machines which threshed wheat, oats and barley. Whole gangs of men would be part of threshing crews back then, as farmers who didn’t have a threshing machine of their own volunteered their time to help with the threshing at other farms in the neighbourhood.
Although I grew up in the age of threshing, we didn’t participate in the age of threshing gangs. My father and uncle helped out the owner of a threshing machine, next door neighbour Fred Gilchrist. They powered it with a Case gas-powered tractor. As I grew older, I helped out a little. My uncle had a farm on the next concession and his neighbour was threshed by a threshing gang that powered the threshing machine with a steam engine.

 

When I look out my window and see the crops being planted or harvested these days, I can’t help thinking how amazed my father would have been today. The tractors planting the corn and soybeans in spring are huge - nearly as big as the steam engines of old, but far faster and more manoeuverable. In the fall, huge combines will team up to harvest 250 acres in 24 hours. My father first gave up threshing when he bought a small combine, pulled by a tractor, which would harvest a few acres a day.
And so the old tractors and farm equipment celebrated at the Thresher Reunion are far different from the equipment used on farms today; even the “modern” equipment used 64 years ago, when the reunion began, would now evoke memories of the farming of the past.

 

I’ve been going to the Thresher Reunion since we came to Blyth in 1972 to operate The Blyth Standard. The Threshers, too, have changed. I remember when there used to be an old shed near the entrance to the park where the women of the Association served up heaping threshermen’s dinners.

 

I remember, too, that a few of those attending used to bring tents or sleep in their cars or trucks. As that became more popular, the Thresher Association bought more land from the farm next door and built a big campground. That campground provides a service to travelling campers all summer long, as well as to guests at other events at the grounds.

 

With thousands of people at the event, food is needed. I remember my sister from her Lucknow church helping out at a food booth held by a local church group.

 

And I remember when craft shows became a big draw, following the success of the Colborne Christmas Country Fair, and the arena in Blyth became site of a big craft show that continues even until today, although many of the other shows have died off.
Over the years, the Threshers have added to the buildings at the grounds including a roof over the sawmill, a shed filled with small models and other attractions and a big building that hosts the annual religious service, where I was a nervous guest speaker a year ago.

 

The founders are long gone and their young assistants are old and grey but the event is bigger than ever. And throughout Blyth, garage sales and lawn sales make coming to Blyth an even bigger event for many visitors.

 

I wonder what Simon Hallahan and the others who started the original Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association 64 years ago would think if they could see their show today. It’s a tribute to all the men and women who have celebrated growing our food since the 1850s that this event still attracts so many.