Ten-Finger Exercises

Threshing Bee

On our way home from visiting Lenore and George and the twins in Spokane, we went through Colfax. On the way out of town we made a U-turn and headed back to see what was going on. A team of horses was pulling a swather, circa 1870's. The swather looked like a wide paddle wheel, and it cut the wheat, which went up a belt into a wagon. A woman stood in the wagon with a pitchfork, piling it up. A team of mules came up with an empty wagon, got it in place and took the full wagon away.

At the bottom of the hill a steam engine with black smoke pouring out of its stack powered a threshing machine, connected to it by a big leather belt. The threshing machine separated the wheat kernals from the stalks, and the wheat went into a truck. The straw went on the ground in a big pile. Another wagon was filled with wood to fire the steam engine.

Every year in Colfax, farmers who own these old machines get together for the threshing bee on Labor Day. Bill will have some pictures for us later this week, I hope.

I've seen pictures of this operation in the museum at Fort Walla Walla, with teams of many, many horses pulling the swathers. The machines are there too, but I never thought I actually get to see any being used. It was a thrill.



A haiku that I wrote a few days ago for a class was supposed to be about a vacation place. Mine wasn't very good, so I'm not repeating it here; but I tried to make the point that it is, for me, usually the journey and the unexpected adventures, not the destination, that make a vacation good. That's probably not good haiku material, but it seems true.