AUSTIN, Man. — The Manitoba Agricultural Museum’s vintage threshing machines have been rolled out for demonstrations and events for decades, but the museum has never touched the ancient wooden threshers in its sheds.
That’s changing for the Harvesting Hope world record threshing attempt, which will be made July 31 at the end of the Threshermen’s Reunion.
Eleven of the weathered but sound machines have already been brought back into working order.
“I can fix this,” Helmut Neufeld, a chief volunteer mechanic with the museum, remembered thinking earlier this year when he saw the line of neglected wooden machines.
“We had considered them too much work to get running.”
Most threshing machines are almost entirely metal. Late models had rubber tires.
However, the earliest threshers were made of wood with the exception of the core mechanics.
On this sunny late June day, volunteers had pulled out six wooden threshing machines for a reporter to examine, and they are redolent in age and experience.
Weathered wood and antique patent information reveal some of the earliest pieces of mechanized agriculture, the forebears of today’s high tech equipment.
While simple and even crude in many ways, they also have a level of workmanship and care that Neuf-eld still finds remarkable.
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Rather than just being utilitarian, Neufeld finds many signs that the carpenters building the machines strove to create aesthetically pleasing implements with rounded edges and wooden framing that reflects the shapes of the metal mechanics.
“These are one-of-a-kind artifacts,” said Neufeld.
By late June, 111 machines from across the heart of North America from Iowa to the Rockies had already been registered for Harvesting Hope.
Up to 140 machines are expected to participate and achieve the goal of setting the world record.
The average cylinder width of the threshers is 26 inches with total capacity so far at 3,120 inches and 4,760 horsepower of engines working them, as well as four horses for one unit.
Harvesting Hope is a charitable event raising money for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank’s overseas efforts and to support operating the Manitoba Agricultural Museum.
