Wheat farming the modern way
Welcome to our hub, Farming today compared
to the old ways
In the very old times the wheat was harvested by hand, so it took ages to collect all the produce from the land, in those times people usually were happy just to be able to have food on their tables.
Wheat farming the modern way
First of all let us acknowledge that modern
wheat farming in Australia and in many other parts of the world as well has
been able to slash the present cost of living a lot; today modern farming
thanks to the many new farming machine available and also the many new
fertilises available are able to produce wheat and other produce a lot cheaper
than in the past, so, food for most of us people has become a lot cheaper,
therefore we are better off today in many ways.
In this hub we would like to invite our
readers to compare how different farming and farming life was at the time when
I was young in the fifties, and also, how hard was life then because most of us
had to work hard just to earn enough to feed ourselves and our families, as you
will become aware by the time you finish reading this article.
This
difference that we are talking about would apply to the farmers and the general
public as well, because today it affects both of them in a beneficial way. So
there is a lot to be said about this great difference in cost and also hardship
or easiness and it all has happened during my life time, so, there are good
reasons to believe that our standard of living has improving a lot, at least in
the sense of being able to feed ourselves with wheat and other farm products, because
the cost of farm products are more affordable today than in the past; so let us
compare the cost of living and some of the reasons why this has happened and
also talk about the farming life that we used to live, at the same time,
perhaps just for the sake of seeing where we have come from.
Today we often wonder how easy it is to
grow and harvest wheat, at least it seems so when we look at a video that shows
harvest time in the wheat farms, we see a few harvester machines in a field
collect the wheat in no time at all, and because of this speed of these
wonderful combine harvester machine food is a lot cheaper today than it used to
be; of course these machines are only part of the machinery that helps the
farmers produce the wheat, because there are many more machines required, so,
just to inform the general public a bit more, because some of them we guess
would not know what is involved at all, let us talk about and show here under a
few more machines that are required to work the fields and produce wheat today.
Some farmer machinery
Tractor pulling a plough in this large field this is a lot easier than used to be, when ploughing was done by using horses or other strong animals to pull the plough
Can you just imagine how hard it would be to plough a large field by horse power only, anyhow this is the way it was done when I was young.
We could say that the most important
machine in the farms is the tractor, as this machine could be used in all sorts
of farming, in wheat farming the tractor is followed by the harvester machine
and other devices to till the soil and to sow the seeds, and all these machines
put together make farming a lot easier today, and therefore wheat can be
produced a lot cheaper, this of course helps keep the price of bread and other
wheat made products down, since wheat is the main food elements required in the
western world to prepare food, therefore, this new way of farming helps a great
deal just about everybody, since wheat would be one of the main ingredients to
make foods for us to eat and we require lots of it.
Of course if we want to talk about farming
in general there is more to say than just wheat farming, because there are many
other things that the bloke on the land would produce, see this link here-under
how Wikipedia explains farming.
Dear readers, now let us continue to talk
about wheat farming and the great benefit that we get from it; we should be
really happy about what is happening here because it is good for us all, so, today
while we are writing this article, we would like to point out that there is a
great difference in the ways of living and definitely we are a lot better off
today than we were, when I was young:
Now, for comparison sake let me explain
this to you, today here in Australia there are a few places that a 600g loaf of
bread costs you just one dollar, we know that this bread is sold at a very
special price from these supermarket, in order to get the customers to the
shop, but we often wonder and we do not know how it could be done so cheap but
they do it anyhow, this very low price of bread is possible only because the
farmer can produce the wheat cheap for a start.
Then, because the wheat is cheap the price
of bread could also be cheap, the supermarkets make it even cheaper to attract
customers, because the supermarkets have a price war to attract customers on
bread and also on milk, so, we can buy a loaf of bread for one dollar and we
can buy a two litre bottled milk for two dollars, that works out at one dollar
per litre, again how they can do it I do not know, but they do it anyhow; so
there is plenty of cheap wholesome food around for us to enjoy, thanks to the
farmers and the supermarkets.
But even though bread and milk is cheap
beyond compare, there are people that still complain about the cost of living
today, I know that what I am talking about here are only a few items and a lot
more are needed to live well. But just for comparison sake let us show you how
easily we can afford to buy bread and milk to day, you see today most people on
the government old age pension in Australia would receive about 700 dollars per
fortnight, which would be about 50 dollars per day, they could very easily
afford to buy bread and milk and other food items.
Now that we have said how easy it is to buy
bread and other staple food today, let us leave behind this affordability of
food today and let us see how things were done in the past. You see, when I was
young things were a lot harder than today, for sure we could not buy bread and
milk as easy as we buy them today, because to produce these things took a lot
more physical work than today and therefore they were a lot more expensive, they
were so because the way of producing them was different, in order to show you
what we mean, hereunder we are going to describe how wheat farming was done at
the time when I was young and also how hard it was for some people just to have
something to eat, even if it was just a piece of bread and butter, or bread and
tomatoes or other basic things that one could find in the fields if you were in
the farms. Anyhow, to start with let me describe how farming was done then, in
this following article, farming the old ways, so that we could have a better
understanding of the whole issue and be able to compare the past with the
present way of farming.
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Farming the old way
Dear readers in order to explain how farming was done at the time when I
was young, what we are going to write hereunder is the way of farm life that
was going on in those times; we know that things have changed for the better since
then, as we have already written above, because of the tractor and new farming
machinery that have come out since then all due to the industrial progress that
we have experienced in the last hundred years or so, but when I was young there
were a lot less advanced farming machine that could make farming easy, of
course some of them like the tractors were already there, but they were very
expensive to buy for most of the farmers, so we had to do most things the old
ways, so let me tell you how life was in the farms of southern Italy in the
early fifties and earlier.
It is a well know fact that in those times and even now, there are two
times during the year, when in the farms everybody would be really working hard
and working very long hours; one of this was sowing time and the other is
harvest time, let us start with sowing times. When I was young the working day
at sowing time would start two hours before dawn, because we had to make the
horses, mules and other animals ready for working in the fields, we had to feed
them and water them as well, it had to be done in such a way that everything
should be made ready in order to go into the fields at daybreak.
At that time of the year in the
morning it would be very cold and there are lots of frosty days, so in the
morning the outside temperature could be around zero or below, it is very hard
then to harness the horses to the plough as everything one touches is so cold;
but then when one gets going it is not so bad, because walking in the fields
holding the plough in one hand and guiding the horses with the other hand is
hard work and it makes one warm. This type of very hard work at sowing time
goes on for about a month if the weather is good and perhaps it could be longer
than a month. When the sowing is done then everything slows down again, but we
had still to look after the farms’ animals and do other farming chores; see
this article My farm life continues, in this hub, in a sub article we
describe what we did after sowing our wheat and during the winter time.
Anyhow, now that we have said what we did in the farms at sowing time, let
us talk about harvest time, since this is the busiest time in the farms,
because harvest time is when the farmers collect the fruits of their hard
labour that they have done during the year, so there is no time to be wasted at
harvest time, therefore this was and still is the most hectic time of the year
for all the farmers, and it is a very worrying time too for the farmers as
well, you see if something goes wrong all their work goes down the drain for
the whole year, so to speak. Here we are talking about mostly how things were
run in the farms when I was young.
Now let us say a few things about today farming, especially about wheat
farming, because wheat is one of the main important produce that we need from
farming, as we have already said at the beginning of this hub. With wheat we
make bread and pasta and other bakery products, therefore it is perhaps the
most important farm produce that we use. So, let us compare what is changed in
wheat farming since I was young:
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Wheat harvest in the fifties
This is a trashing wheat machine in the fifties, it is a rather small machine compared to the one that we used to hire in our farm when I was young.
In the very old times there were other methods of separating the wheat from the straws, one of this is described in our text.
After you finished with the horses, and taken from the top the large straws, what was left needed to be separated from the chaffs by using a breeze of wind that would take the lighter stuff downwind and the wheat being heavier would fall in the front. Of course there was a lot more to it to completely clean the new wheat.
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The following description is the way of wheat harvest time in the
fifties when I was young. When I was young we had already a horse drawn
harvester that was helping us, this early harvester was able to cut the wheat
plants and tie them in bundles, so we were already half way down the track of
progress, as this machine saved us a lot of work, because we did not have to
harvest by hand. Anyhow, at this time of the year everybody in the farm works
hard and for very long hours, it is very hot at this time of the year and
everything is very dry. We get up very early in the morning, we get the horses
ready for working by feeding them and watering them, then we harness the horses
and set them to pull the harvester, and off we go in the fields for another day
of hard work, if everything goes well, we might be able to go over a ten acre
field just in one day with this harvester. The harvester needs two people to
get it working, one drives the horses and another regulate the harvester, the
harvester goes around the field and leaves these bundles of wheat or other
cereal, whatever has been sown in the field. Now these bundles of wheat will be
collected in hips around the field from other people as soon as possible, the
hips of these bundles of wheat are made is such a way that if it rains the rain
would run off easily, these hips of wheat will be collected later on when we
finish with the harvester, perhaps in a week or two, we will go back to the
fields with a cart to take everything on a special plot near the farm house,
where the trashing machine will be hired and set.
When we collect and cart everything to the farm house, we work very long
days, we get up before 4 am, but we have a break of two or three hours at
lunchtime because it is too hot to do anything, then we go back to work and
between real work and looking after the animals we finish at dusk around 8 pm,
after that we only have to feed the horses: this sort of work goes on for more
than a month and sometimes up to two months, with no breaks at all seven days a
week. Everybody in the farm works to their maximum and they are very tired,
they are also very worried about the possible fire hazard, and also of any
thunder storms at this time of the year, since anyone of these happenings can
destroy the whole crop, and a whole year of hard work could go up in smoke. So
we all would be waiting for the trashing machine to come and finish our
harvest.
When some farmers' did not have a lot of wheat to trash, they could use a
place in common with other farmers, so that, the trashing machine would not
have to be set several times. The trashing machine that were around and we
would hire together with other farmers came with a large crew, because it was a
much larger machine than the one shown in this hub, it had a crew of about
twenty people, it was a very interesting time when we were trashing our own
wheat, oats, barley, etc. Because we were anxious to see how much wheat and
other product we had made.
Now there were many other things that I would be able to tell you, but I
better not just to make it short; but here I would like to say that when one
goes through these life experiences in the farm one knows that it is really
hard life farming, but since this is the only way to grow these things for
food, we the farmers keep working in our farms to feed the rest of the
community.
So we feel that it would be right if the rest of the community should be
thanking us for all the hard work that we have done, but it does not happen
that way because, even when we are working our guts out, and while we are doing
that we are becoming dull, the rest of the community does not care and they
label us as dull people, just because we are farm people, but we did our part of
hard work for our own benefit and also for the benefit of the entire town
community.
This is how life was then in the small farms of Southern Italy. Now this
town people attitude as I have said above, plus some very lean years when we
hardly could survive and also because we had only a very small farm and it
would have been hard to expand was one of the reasons why I migrated to
Australia. But anyhow let us continue and describe how harvesting was done the
very old way, so that we could compare it to today’s living.
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Harvesting the very old way
Now, before we come to a close, because we
want to compare the old ways of farming with today farming, we need to say how
harvesting wheat was done before; here we need to say also that I have
witnessed the last part of this old practice when I was young. You see, when I
was young we were already using a horse drawn harvester, and it was very
helpful; but there were people that had some very small holdings and we had one
of these ourselves, so we had to use the old ways of harvesting our wheat for
that small wheat field, because that was the only way to do it for one reason
or another.
So, let me describe how harvesting was done
in those old bygone days; at harvesting time strange as it may seem today, one
could hire some specialized people that were good at using the sickle, these
people usually went from town to town to do this seasonal harvesting job; we
need also to explain that in Southern Italy because the terrain has different
altitude the wheat reaches maturity at different times, this was helping these
seasonal workers to have a longer span of work, now just to compare those very
hard times with today times, I have to tell you that these workers were
sleeping anywhere they could on a sack filled up with straws under a shelter if
they could find one, as they could not afford anything else. In the morning
they would get up early and wait in the town square hoping that somebody would
hire them for the day.
Now let us say that we had a small plot
about one acre and we could not use the harvester of those time, because it was
not possible to go there, we would then hire four people and form a gang that
could harvest one acre in one day and collect it in hips that would be later on
taken on a cart to the farm house to be threshed one way or another.
In the old times anything that had grown in
the field was collected, it needed to be collected for the people to survive,
it was the only way because the fields did not produce as much as they do
today, because they could not be cultivated as good as we do today with our
modern machine. You see today we have the tractor to cultivate the fields and
definitely it does a better job that the horse drawn plough, we have also many
types of fertilizer to help us grow more wheat, but let us go back to talk
about old harvesting times.
Wheat trashing the very old
time
Now I suppose I have to say briefly how the
older generations before my times used to thresh their harvests, in order to
collect all their produce. Now, let us suppose that it was only a few bundles
of wheat to be threshed one could even extract the wheat by hitting them with a
stick, but let us say that we had a cartful, or many cartfuls for that matter,
then we had to use a different method, which is the way that most farm used in
the very old times for centuries, before the trashing machine was invented, so
let me tell you how it was done.
I happen to know this procedure, because in
the farms when I was young we were still using this method with smaller crops
most likely broad beans, lentils, chick peas, linseed, and other farm produce
that were not meant to go through the wheat trashing machine. When we were
doing this procedure of trashing with these minor crops the elder would always
be telling us that this was the way that they used to collect their wheat as
well and usually it took them a few months to collect all the season produce.
So now let me describe this to you, so that we would be able to compare the
great difference.
In order to do this, first of all we needed
to prepare a piece of ground that is very solid and smooth, this could be
achieved by stripping the old dry grass on a piece of land that had a large
clay content, then wet it with a little bit of water to make it compact; once
that was ready we would place our wheat or whatever was to be threshed and
collected on this clean ground, then we would get our horses mule and donkeys
whatever animals were available and drive them around and around until
everything was threshed. Of course there was a lot more to say, but let us make
it short otherwise it would become too boring.
Now, once the threshing was done we has to
separate the produce from the straw and any other foreign matter, this was
achieved by removing the straws from the top layer making sure that no produce
was left with the straws, at the same time we would collect the bottom layer in
a hip, once that was done we would have to clean that produce by using the
wind, to take away the finer parts that were still mixed with the wheat or
whatever it was, and there were many other things that we could use to get this
wheat clean, by the end of the day we could have collected two or three hundred
kilograms of produce.
In the very ancient times was even worse,
see what they were using in the Medieval Times, here is a link to check out
some ancient farm tools including the Flail and Winnowing Basket used to
collect and clean wheat.
I hope that this gives the modern reader a
view of how thing were done in the old times, so I do not want to say much more
about how all this threshing and cleaning of the wheat was done, because even
writing about it is boring today, but anyhow it needed to be done in those
days, because that was the only way to collect our wheat to make bread and
other things to eat. Now, my dear reader’s do you see how hard was then even to
collect wheat for ourselves.
I hope I have been able to write something
that really sets up the great difference of the ways of life that we were
living then and the ways of life that we are living now, for this I want you to
compare and judge for yourself how much better off we are today.
To the young people who think that today
life is hard, let me describe to you what I have witnessed when I was young,
because then life really was harder then today, you see those days everybody
had to find how to earn enough to feed themselves there were no handover from
the government. So, the very poor people of those days were trying to collect
anything they could to feed themselves.
So at harvest time this is what I have
witnessed, I have seen old and poor people mainly old ladies go around the
fields and pick up any ear of wheat that was left behind in the fields, one ear
of wheat here and anther there until they had the strength, each day until
harvest time was over and there was nothing else to collect; and I tell you
what these poor people were happy if in the end they had collected enough ears
of wheat that they could trash and clean themselves, perhaps they could have
collected enough to make 50 to 100 kilos of wheat during harvest time and they
were happy because, they could make bread from this wheat and not go hungry for
a few months.
Now I hope that you see what I mean when I
say that the youths of today don’t know anything about hard times?
Anyhow as you can see this is just another
story of my life, which I am telling in Hub-Pages, and I am posting some links
for the other stories here under, if you like to read them?
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