Having now introduced four of the craftsmen whose talents had major impacts on the developing pioneer communities of the Ohio Country and whose work will continuously figure in this ongoing American tale, it’s time to move forward with the labors of the pioneers.
With the bulk of the work that would enable the pioneer family to face its first winter in the Ohio Country in at least a marginally comfortable fashion now completed, it was time to turn full attention to bringing in the harvest. After working non-stop to plant and cultivate crops amidst hundreds of stumps both large and small, the time to collect the rewards of that labor was finally at hand.
First to be harvested was the wheat crop, for which a variety of specialized tools was required. The first of these were the reaping hook and the hay crook. Used in unison to accomplish the job, these two nouns continue to be joined in common usage even in today’s lexicon when we speak of getting a job done “by hook or by crook.”
Hay crook and reaping hook
The hay crook was simply a stout limb from which an equally stout side branch had grown at a 45-degree angle. This branch was shaved down using a drawknife until it had a circumference that comfortably fit the hand of the user.
The reaping hook (often incorrectly called a sickle) was a wicked-looking implement with a thin, razor-sharp, tapering iron blade about 2 1/2 feet in length. Shaped somewhat like the letter ‘C,’ it had a tang about 4 inches in length bent at a 90-degree angle to the bottom of the ‘C.’ To the tang was attached a turned or whittled piece of wood which served as the handle. Reaping hooks, often as not, were made of iron recycled from a worn-out file. Light in weight, they literally whistled through the air when in use.
To use the hook and crook in combination, the harvester leaned over, gathered an armload of the standing wheat stalks by pulling them into a bundle with the crook, then cut them all off with a swipe of the hook. After several such armloads had been severed in this manner, they were gathered up and tied together with cord. Next, perhaps a dozen of these bundles were brought together and stacked tepee-style, with a couple of bundles laid across the top to help shed rainwater until they could be brought into the barn for flailing. The shocks were then left to dry for several weeks.
Even today members of many of the nation’s Amish communities continue to create wheat shocks in this traditional manner and, starting in July, their fields are dotted with neatly arranged rows of shocks.
Flailing
The next step was to bring the shocks into the barn for the flailing process. To do this the shocks were dismantled and the individual bundles pitched up onto a shock wagon for hauling. Shock wagons — which were also used for corn shocks — were long, flat-bed wagons. They were distinctive from other types of farm wagons because they had long, heavy wooden fenders over the tops of the wheels. These fenders prevented the grain stalks from becoming entangled in the spokes of the wooden wheels, while at the same time expanding the cargo area of the wagon.
Another feature of the shock wagon was the addition of a stout post at either end of the wagon bed. Each of these posts had a vertical arrangement of holes through which heavy iron pins could be inserted. The posts served essentially as bookends for the load that was piled high on the bed of the wagon. When the load of shocks attained a height where it began to become unstable on the wagon bed, a heavy timber that spanned the space between the two end posts was laid on top of the load to compress and stabilize it. The timber was attached to the end posts of the wagon using iron pins through the holes at the proper height.
With the shocks now secured, the heavily loaded wagon was towed to the barn by a team of horses.
At the barn, the bundles of wheat stalks were unloaded and stacked like cordwood in preparation for the next phase of processing, which took place on the threshing floor of the barn. The threshing floors of early barns were always made of wide boards that were tongue and grooved together to prevent grain that was being flailed on the floor from falling through cracks and being lost in the lower area. Nevertheless, old blankets were often placed on the threshing floor to further insure against losing grain.
Flailing was done using a tool that today is almost unknown — called (surprise!) a flail. A flail consists of two pieces of wood typically attached together with a piece of leather thong. The first — and thinner — piece is the handstaff or helve, usually about 4 feet in length. The second component, heavier than the helve, is the beater or swipple. The swipple was often attached to the handstaff by a bentwood collar which allowed it to swivel in any direction. To flail, bundles of wheat were taken from the stack and laid in a circular pattern on the floor so that the wheat heads were piled in the center with the stalks sticking outwards.
The flailers, usually four or five, then stood around the pile of wheat and used the beaters of the flails to knock the seeds out of the heads. Contrary to how the process is often portrayed, the flails were not swung back over the head and onto the pile. Rather, the handles were held out straight and maneuvered to make the helves flip over and strike the wheat heads — a technique which required considerably less effort. The workers would strike the pile in a clockwise pattern, one after another, chanting to keep them on rhythm. One 18th-century Pennsylvania German flailing chant went like this:
“Mommy makes riw’wel soup,
Daddy likes riw’wel soup,
Daughter eats riw’wel soup,
Son enjoys riw’wel soup,
We all eat riw’wel soup.”
Repeat … ad infinitum.
When most of the wheat grains had been dislodged from the heads, a fresh group of stalks was arranged on the floor — and the process continued toward the next step.
