Once the crop had been cut and properly dried, farmers then had to separate the grain from the chaff or husks, this was known as threshing.
Bringing in the harvest and getting the grain to market was really the highlight of the farm year. And getting that done meant bringing in the custom threshers.
Before the days of combines and tractors, Alberta farmers depended on crews
of travelling threshers to help bring in the harvest. It would take a crew of
about ten or twelve men a week to thresh the grain at each farm.
Treadmills powered the earliest threshers that separated grain. Horses were harnessed to walk on a wooden treadmill, and this horsepower was transmitted by a belt to the threshing machine.
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