Oat Farming

During the years I was in high school and junior college I worked on the farm, either for my uncle Carl, or for neighboring farmers. I don’t recall for sure but I think I did some work the summer after we moved to the farm — I was between 7th and 8th grades in school. I probably helped to “shock” oats, or it may have been that I drove the tractor which pulled the binder (the machine that cut the oats and tied them into bundles). The bundles were assembled in the field into a shock, each shock containing 8 bundles plus an additional cap bundle to help shed the rain. During the threshing operation these oat bundle shocks were loaded onto hay racks, hauled to the site in the barnyard where the threshing was done and tossed into the threshing machine. This was one of the jobs that my father did for uncle Carl and I believe I drove the bundle wagon for him.

The two old horses that still remained on the farm were used to pull the bundle wagon. One of these was old Birdie — she died one winter day from old age. She fell down in the barnyard and couldn’t get up again. I believe uncle Carl had the vet come out and dispatch her. The other horse was Barney, a younger horse and a son for Birdie. He was a better animal — his fate was to contract encephalitis and one night during the threshing season he broke out of the barnyard, ran off and died in a neighbor’s cornfield. I had been driving Barney and Birdie when I was hauling bundles myself at a later date.

I had noticed the day before that Barney had been acting strangely. That was the time I had to drive the fully loaded bundle over a sloping place near the southeast corner of the barn and the wagon fell over. The accident probably could have been avoided had not Barney stopped in a strange manner at precisely the wrong moment relative to the equilibrium of the bundle wagon — had he kept on moving the wagon might have stayed upright. That evening before he broke out Barney ran ceaselessly back and forth in the barnyard, doubtless showing the effect of his affliction.

Two principal crops were grown on the farm when we moved onto it — oats and corn. The “fanning” of the seed oats was typically the first fieldwork of the season in which I participated. I can recall the fanning mill being set up in the runway of the old granary and helping uncle Carl with the fanning operation. The oats from the previous year’s harvest were stored either in two overhead bins in the corn crib or in a bin on the east side of the granary. The oats from the latter bin were the part of the crop from the previous year used to prepare the seed oats. I can still sense the still cool weather of the spring at the time and the sense of the beginning of the season’s work.

After oats declined as a crop (replaced by soybeans), the soybeans were stored, in part, in the granary where the oats had been. The granary was the oldest building on the farm and in not-too-good condition. On one occasion, after I had left the farm either for school at the University of Iowa or to go to work for Shell, the granary sprang a leak and the soybeans leaked out into the barnyard where the cows were. They ate too much and several of them died

The west side of the granary when we were on the farm was used for storage of miscellaneous equipment — it may at one time have been used also for grain storage. There was a loft and it was there that I found an old discarded sewing machine of my grandmother’s. The wooden part of the machine was black walnut and I used the wood to make a sewing box for her from it. After my grandmother died I think my mother acquired it and used it for awhile but eventually it came back to me. I refinished it, fixed the hinges and not it sits on top of my dresser holding various relics.



This is the box. [It is now in my possession — LRS.] Inside, there is the following note: This box was made when I was a freshman in high school in manual arts class. It was constructed of wood from an old sewing machine (vintage earlier than 1915) that had belonged to my maternal grandmother and was given to her as a sewing box. Later it was used similarly by my mother and I acquired it on her death. I refinished it at that time along with some minor repairs.