Threshing the corn

Roll out the barrel for the threshing machine team
A steam engine driven threshing tackle at work	THE late Connie Elsdon recalled her father, Sampson Suckling, working on the threshing machine. “I don't suppose you've ever seen one, not with the old chuff chuff engine with the chaff cutter and the bailer and all that. They cut the corn in sheaves and it was put into stocks and then into a stack. So the man that had the threshing machine - there was only one in the area and they used to contract with the farmer who wanted his stack thrashed to get the corn to the corn exchange. So father used to set off with this great machine and all the paraphernalia and they would meet at this farm and they threshed this stack. There were two men on it - father was the driver and Mr Allen was his mate - and when they got to the area they employed local labour and said we can give you four days’ work, according to how long they thought it would take to thresh the stacks.
It was done by about ten men and all this machinery, like a combine harvester does now. On the last day the farmer always laid on a small cask of beer. There was no worry about drink-driving because there were no cars. The next day they would probably go to the next farm; they tried to keep it in areas. So it took most of the rest of the year for the farmers to get all the stacks thrashed before the next harvest. On Sunday afternoon my father used to go to whichever farm the machine was and he'd make the fire and get the steam up so that they could start first thing on Monday morning. I could always remember that it was always my job to help him off with his special boiler suit, which was a clean one he kept to do that work on a Sunday. Connie’s sister, Peggy Ruddock added: When father gave up the thrashing machine he became a tractor driver and in the harvest time we used to have to take father's tea about five o'clock.		A threshing team at Valley Farm, near Wethersfield
Sampson Suckling far right, sang in the church choir.	We always used to look forward to the harvest time: I used to cut piles of sandwiches, because father was a marvellous gardener, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese. We used to make big milkcans of hot tea, because there were no flasks and sometimes our bare legs would touch the hot cans. Big dishes of apple dumplings, baked apple dumplings and we cut the bottom out, fill it with brown moist sugar on the apple and by the time we came to eat them it was all like caramel. It was lovely.
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