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The Rural Voice, 1979-10, Page 22Keith Rouiston Changes I was travelling down a concession in the heart of Amish country in Northern Huron county the other day and saw something that made me feel very old. It wasn't anything too earth shattering, just a field of grain cut with a binder and stooked in tidy rows. Anybody who's lived in farming country for a while knows the sight. What made me feel old was that it made me realize how much things have changed in my own lifetime. As a youngster I remember when the biggest excitement of the year was the word that the threshing machine was coming. Combines were still a rarity except in pictures of the West in those days, at least in our neck of the woods. The huge threshing gangs of the past were no longer working perhaps but neighbours still got together to bring in the crops. There were still some horses around in the early 1950's when I was old enough to start being fascinated by what was going on around me but most of the old horse-drawn equipment had been adapted to be pulled by tractors. It seems to me the biggest excitement of the year was when harvest began. For days the men of the house would be gazing out at the fields waiting for the right time to start cutting the grain. They'd haul out the old binder, mend the canvasses, sharpen the blades and try to find any worn parts so they wouldn't give out in the middle of the job (of course they always did anyway.) When I think back on it there was a kind of beauty to the sound of the binder, the clicking of the blade, the rattling of the canvasses and the rhythm of the machine kicking out the sheaves. There was a wonder for a youngster who was still finding it hard to tie shoe laces in how a machine _could tie knots so easily. A binder was a marvellous mystery to a kid. Even more impressive though was the coming of the threshing (we always said thrashing) machine. Part of the excitement was the machine itself, all humming and clicking and chugging, gobbling up sheaves live some kind of never satiated insect at the front end,and spitting out the grain and straw at the other. To the men it was hot dirty work. To kids it was sheer pleasure. Even the dusty, choking granary was a place of adventure, watching the mountain of gold mount up in huge piles. And then there were the men. Boys tried to act so grown up when the threshing party was there. We wanted to be included in everything. We watched the men show off their skills. We listened to their stories. PG. 20 THE RURAL VOICE/OCTOBER 1979 We could hardly wait until we could help out. Our family moved on to using a combine while I was still young. There was excitement to the combine too, particularly because we were among the first in our neighbourhood to use one but somehow it wasn't quite the same as the threshing machine. I got my chance to work at threshings in my early teenage years. There were still a fair number of people threshing then and they provided a source of employment for a teenager looking for some extra money. Now one is pretty hard-pressed to see a threshing operation anymore except at one of the threshing reunions or in Amish country. What makes me feel so old is not so much that things have changed as how much they've changed. The threshing machine gave way to tractor -pulled com- bines which have given way for the most part to huge self-propelled combines, the kind we used to see only in pictures of the Prairies. Those days of endless fields of 1 oats and barley and wheat have yielded to an everchanging variety of crops. Corn is king today with about as many acres as mixed grain used to have. Mixed grain gets as much as corn used to have. White beans were a novelty in our part of the country when I was young but today they've moved north and are quickly being replaced by soybeans. Farm equipment has changed beyond belief. Many were still mourning the loss of the horse when I was growing up. In fact many a farmer, my father included, kept a team around for a few years to do odd jobs because he couldn't bear to part with them. Who could have predicted then that little tractors that seemed so modern would soon look like toys beside the huge monsters of today. People not familiar with farming tend to think of it as being a conservative profession, with change resisted. In truth there is probably no industry that has changed as much in the 1, st 25 years as farming (although the publishing industry is right with it). People think of . aviation for instance as innovative but since the 1950's there haven't been as many changes in air travel as there have been in farming. And who can guess what will happen in the next 25 years. 60 BEVOND NAILING CrranoN 19e0 � a./carr Go NEW CITATION 4500 — The two-up •• Two season luxury sled, economy priced! • Single carb gas miser! • Oil injection! • Torque Reaction © slide suspension. warranty Lynn Hoy Enterprises Ltd. Highway 86 E. Wingham 357-3435