CHAPTER IV.

HOME INDUSTRIES

Stormy Days and Evening:

Stormy days and evenings were busy and happy times. Father } would thresh grain and my big brothers saw with the whipsaw. The ; grain was threshed with a Hail. The flail was made of two round i sticks, much larger than a broom handle. The stick held in the hands ‘i was five feet long, the other four feet; there was a hole, like the eye j, of a needle, at one end of the handle and a groove cut around the end i of the other stick; a strong strip of sheepskin fastened the two sticks together and formed a flexible link, or joint between them. The thresher took hold of the handle and swung it over his head and i brought down the beater with a whack on the sheaves of grain that g were spread on the barn floor. Father was dexterous at this. He 1 threshed all our grain this way. The grain was shaken out of the straw and winnowed, or fanned by the wind.

The Treadmill

After a time more land was put under cultivation and larger . crops grown. Threshing with a Hail was too slow a process. Some ' of the enterprising farmers got treadmills. These were machines driv- en by horses; the horses trod on a belt-like revolving floor. A strong frame was made wide enough to give room for two horses to walk . abreast in it. The thick hardwood planks forming the floor were fas- 7 tened together by hinges; an iron rod went through each set of hinges; each rod had a small iron wheel on both ends; these wheels ran on an 5 iron track like a little railroad track. When the mill was set up the 1 front end was two feet higher than the back end. When the horses 5 went up into this frame, their weight on the floor made it run back; the little wheels ran down the track. The horses had to keep walking '

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