The Rural Voice, 1996-10, Page 24The worst year he can remember
was in the 1940s when the wheat was
too wet to harvest - the stooks were
green with sprouts (though they
eventually got them in). The year was
so wet there were no potatoes dug or
available at the markets for the
townspeople to buy.
The MacGregor family has been
farming since 1851 in the Kippen
area when the MacGregor brothers
picked out land close by, from the
13th to 17th concession. Their land is
more scattered now, he says.
JJis
dad, William, who lived to
be 88, purchased a steam
threshing outfit in 1914 from
the South Huron Syndicate of
farmers and continued threshing in
the area with the same customers.
Threshing the crops of 50 or 60
customers a year meant he had to
keep a tight schedule. Customers
would book in, and he might look
after one or more in a day in the peak
harvest months of August, September
and October.
In 1915, having the harvest
threshed cost farmers between $4 and
$26. Neighbour J. Caldwell paid $17
and B.C. Edwards paid $5.
Keeping the steam machinery in
repair was a tall order. Using up time
and keeping customers waiting, he
went to London on the train for parts,
fare $1.80, or took his old car, but the
tires blowing out were always a
problem. Then he tried tire filler, but
he would turn a corner too quickly
and tire filler would go in all
directions.
For the first few years, he kept up
this acquired threshing business with
a steam engine and thresher.
Ron recalls a story with steam
engines which made quite a racket as
they worked: when the MacGregors
went to fill a silo at a neighbour's
place, they noticed the family's cows
in the evening would be milked as
they stood in the yard rather than be
tied up. The steam engine let off
steam and the cows took off. When
the men looked around, they couldn't
see the cows or the pail of milk — all
they could see was a woman wiping
the milk off her face with her apron.
By 1919, he was ready to retire the
steam machine, and he went to
Robert Bell, Engine and Thresher
Company, a local threshing
manufacturer of Seaforth, to check
out a gas engine to replace the steam.
20 THE RURAL VOICE
The MacGregor name has been on the Kippen-area farm since 1851 when two
MacGregor brothers took up land near each other.
He wanted to deal with someone
close, someone he knew, although the
Bell Company more often sold to
Western customers than local.
The gas engine, a 22-40, a 40
horsepower engine, was bought for
$3,200, about the cost of a hundred
acres of land. This engine with slow
speed motor and large bearings was
especially adapted for heavy pulling
and roadwork. With a new separator
for $2,500 the threshing outfit was
complete. (Models of this tractor and
threshers of the era are available from
the Seaforth Agricultural Society.)
The threshing days were dusty and
long with many customers looked
after, the air full of chaff and kernels,
and often workers had to blow the
chaff off the water pail before they
could take a drink. He marvelled they
almost never complained about this.
In the 1920s, the charge for
threshing varied with the customer,
what and how much was done; for
example, the Doig Brothers paid
$22.50 for six hours threshing, and
Ed Sproat paid $20.68 for two hours
threshing, with the grain being cut. If
some farmers couldn't pay, they took
a note. When times were lean, the
interest was added to the principal,
and farmers got by that way.
In the 1930s, custom threshing
cost farmers five or six cents a bushel
for oats, or $2.50 per hour, not as
much as in 1925. "We were in kind
of a box in the '30s, with the gas
companies wanting money up front,
when gas was 11 cents a gallon, and
the farmers often not wanting to pay
us right away."
Aht the age of 13, Ron was
expected to work like an adult
and he remarked at the way
is father trusted him to back
or cable the separator into the barn
and in complete darkness without
lights. "I could only tell from the
signals of his lantern when to stop, or
I'd have had the separator dropping
out the other side of the barn!" Coal
oil lanterns, not hydro, were the norm
for lighting the barns.
Ron mentioned the responsibilities
he had at an early age with
amazement, noting that the young
people of today aren't as well taught
and don't have the same respect for
machinery and farming practices. For
him, the experience around
equipment is learned so it is almost
second nature.
Ron hopes to teach his
grandchildren at an early age the
ways of farming, the dangers of
machinery, a respect for belts, shields
and moving equipment.
Although he knows there might
not be many more generations of
MacGregors as .farmers, he can
always point to the past as farming so
far has been the MacGregor way of
life.0