William Dascavich is a farmer from Edmonton
In the early years of western Canadian agriculture, fields were dotted with straw piles. They stood out like pimples on the Prairies.
In the fall, when the grain was threshed, virtually every field had one.
They varied in size and shape but generally appeared like miniature light-coloured mountains about 10 metres high.
Bundles of grain that were stooked in the field were loaded on racks placed on wood or steel wheeled wagons, hauled to a threshing machine and fed into it. The machine separated the grain from the stalks and the chaff.
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The grain was hauled away into bins and the stalks and chaff, referred to as straw, were blown through a large pipe into a pile.
The pipe could be swivelled and adjusted for height, enabling the threshing machine operator to stack a proper pile.
When conditions were right for threshing at night, the straw was sometimes lit to burn as it fell on the ground from the pipe to provide light. At other times, it was lit because the straw was not required.
These were tricky operations. Great care had to be taken to avoid having the fire get away and set the surrounding stubble on fire.
Often there would be a wooden granary into which the grain was poured directly from the threshing machine. This was an additional hazard.
Straw piles served a number of practical purposes. First and foremost they served as a storage for winter feed for cattle and horses.
The animals preferred oat and barley straw. Wheat straw had little nutritional value. After freeze-up they headed for the straw piles and fed on the straw itself, as well as any grain that was not separated by the threshing machine.
After feeding, they would bed down and use the straw pile for shelter. Many a calf and foal were born in the straw piles.
When bedding was required for the barns or sheds, a team of horses was hitched to a rack mounted on a bobsleigh in the winter, or a wagon in the summer, driven to the straw pile and loaded with straw.
For this purpose wheat straw was best.
When animals were feeding on straw piles, farmers had to keep a close eye kept on them.
As horses and cattle fed on the straw through winter, they would eat and form caves in the piles. There were instances where an animal would be feeding deep in one of these caves and it would collapse, trapping the animal and suffocating it.
It was not uncommon to find pregnant sows, many of which used to range freely in those days, using a straw pile as a shelter in which to throw their litter.
A couple of weeks after farrowing, one could see them walking on the livestock path from the straw pile to the yard, followed by their litter of piglets.
Dogs would also seek out the shelter of straw piles to have their puppies.
In the spring, when the livestock was back in the fields foraging, straw piles that were no longer required as a reserve for feed or for shelter would be burned.
A farmer could always tell where a straw pile had been located in a field because the crop would be dense and lush on that spot for several seasons as a result of organic fertilizer being deposited by the animals.
Freshly threshed straw would have a distinct clean smell to it. If the wind happened to be from the right direction, the smell from a threshing outfit would waft for quite a distance.
As farmers switched to swathers and combines, straw piles and the benefits they provided gradually disappeared. Straw now comes in neatly packaged square or round bales.
Livestock production has become specialized and concentrated.
This progress did not come about without its own set of problems in dealing with animal (and human) health.
