A step back in time

Threshing bee brings back memories in Homer

HOMER -- Jazmine Meeks, of Duncombe, was sitting in the seat of a restored 1950 John Deere A Saturday morning at the 25th West Central Region Cockshutt & CO-OP Club Threshing Bee with her little sister Jennie Phipps, of Wolf.

Jennie got to pretend she was driving.

Meeks got to experience some memories on the bright shiny green machine.

"There's a lot of memories with my great-grandfather," Meeks said. "We used to ride on them; we used to rebuild tractors together."

While her great-grandfather, Rollie Stevens, is gone, the family still has one of his machines.

"We have the Allis D14," she said.

That John Deere she was sitting on belongs to Brandon Harms, of Duncombe.

"I won it in a raffle at another show," Harms said.

He said tractors have just always been a part of his life since he grew up on the farm.

His tractor wasn't going to spend the day just sitting there.

"I might put it on the thresher later," he said. "We did run it last year. It did really well."

Sometimes old equipment needs a little tinkering, adjusting, cleaning and cussing at to work right.

Tim Berven, of Stanhope, was doing all of that with his hand-cranked corn sheller.

"Last week I had it out at an event and a bunch of kids put all sorts of junk in it," Berven said. "It's all plugged up."

He was using a piece of metal rod and a pair of pliers to get it cleaned out. He had it good to go in short order.

"I have no idea how old this is," he said. "I'd guess it's pushing a hundred."

Berven, who grew up on a farm, said he worked from an early age.

"I learned to drive at 5," he said. "I was on a tractor by age 10; never knew what an automatic (transmission) was till I was about 12."

He grew up in an era where there was still a lot of manual labor.

"I heard stories about horses growing up," he said. "Combines -- they can do more in an hour than we could in a week."

April Patten, of Boone, was part of the group of club members and advice givers putting the belts back onto the Wood Brothers threshing machine. The two members who knew how the belts go on were both gone. There's no manual and it's not something found on Google.

"It will be up and running," Patten said. "It's taking some time. It's been two years. We're working with educated guesses."

The crew did get it running and the threshing got going later.

"It's a lot of fun," she said, "especially if I can get it up and running."

McKinlee Murphy, 9, got to run around and try almost everything -- that included feeding sorghum into the grinder and chewing on one of the sweet stalks.

"I helped last year," Murphy said. "It's really fun; I like watching it crush. Sometimes I find spiders in it. I like spiders. I don't hurt them, I pick it up and put it on the ground. They won't hurt you if you’re not mean to them."