Oscar's Threshing Crew

 

Author: Ralph Roggenbuck

 

About the last of the large threshing crews in the western part of ND expired by the late 1940's. One of our neighbor's didn't follow this trend. Oscar Christopherson threshed as long as he lived, I actually worked on this crew when I was 8 to about 11 or 12 years old.

 

Oscar Christopherson and his other neighbor Art Bestland farmed about 500 acres between them and had threshed together for years. As the other small farmers that had threshed with them had been disappearing; the crew kept shrinking. By the time I was old enough to actually realize what was happening the crew was down to 4 people. Oscar, his grandson, Donny, Art, & his son, Gary, were all of the remaining crew. As anyone with a knowledge of threshing knows, that is a very small crew!

  

The machine belonged to Oscar. It was a McCormick-Deering, rather small for a threshing machine. The bundle hauling consisted of just 2 racks. Among them they owned 3 tractors. Oscars Farmall H was the big power. It ran the machine. Oscar's nearly new Farmall C was next. Art had a 1939 Ford 9N. This was the power pool to thresh with. Neither of them had a truck. Wagons and sometime Oscars IHC 1/2 ton pickup were used to haul all of the grain.

 

One fall they were threshing over at Art's. The Des Lacs River cut Art's farm into many pieces. The bundles had to be hauled through the river as no bridges existed. This fall for some reason the little creek was higher and faster than normal. My dad had happened to stop there on his way by. He watched them cross the river with Art's little Ford. The driver got wet and the Ford had a tough time pulling the wagon up the bank. The racks were high enough to keep the grain dry; but the current was strong enough to push the racks sideways while the small tractors were pulling through the river.

 

Dad came home, went out to the field and brought the swather into the yard. We unhooked the Farmall M, that we had on the swather. Dad hooked the old Farmall F-20 to the swather and told my mother to come and get him in about 15 minutes at Art's yard. He took the M over there and insisted they use it!  It was enough bigger & heavier to cross the river without any problems. They used it until they were through at Art's and then brought it back.

 

About 2 years later Art had died and his son had left to live with his older sister. This left a threshing crew of 2 people. As there were 3 of us boys and I was not needed at home, I spent a lot of time just driving the Farmall C in the field while Donny loaded the bundles. I was too young to do it alone, but could be a help that way!

 

I would also sometimes help by unloading a grain wagon, while the load was being threshed. By the time I was 14 or 15, I was working off the home farm so didn't help much with threshing anymore. Oscar threshed until 1961 and died over that winter.

 

This was a man that I had never heard use a swear word or even get angry and I had known him about 14 years. In many ways he was more a grandfather to me than my own was!