History of the Thresher

This is what the process looked like over the years

A threshing machine or a thresher is a piece of farm equipment that separates grain seed from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with flails: such hand threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of agricultural labour by the 18th century.^[1] Mechanization of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery from farm labour. The first threshing machine was invented circa 1786 by the Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle, and the subsequent adoption of such machines was one of the earlier examples of the mechanization of agriculture. During the 19th century, threshers and mechanical reapers and reaper-binders gradually became widespread and made grain production much less laborious.

Separate reaper-binders and threshers have largely been replaced by machines that combine all of their functions, that is combine harvesters or combines.

Our club is blessed that one of our members, Jim Dillon owns a thresher. Jim’s Thresher is from 1925. The entire thresher process will be on display at the Sarpy Co. fair, August 1st and 2nd in Springfield Ne. Below is some video from last years fair.

Please watch a short video from our demonstration from last year. Just click on the white arrow