So, now, with the farmhands having flailed the heck out of the piles of wheat on the barn floor and raked up the stalks and empty heads that contained the seed, what remained was a pile of grain that would eventually have to be processed into flour.
At this point, however, the grain was mixed with plant material, dust and dirt from the barn floor which had to be removed. The process of doing this was called “winnowing” and it demanded both the efforts of man, coupled with the cooperation of Mother Nature.
Winnowing
Winnowing involved the use of a winnowing tray or winnowing fan, which, while somewhat different from one another in appearance, were used to achieve the same result.
The winnowing tray was a large, semicircular wooden tray about four feet across at the widest point. Formed around the curved edge was a thin piece of wood 7 or 8 inches high. To this edge, two wooden handles were attached, one on either side of the tray. Into the winnowing tray, the grains of wheat that had been flailed were swept, along with the dust, dirt, residual vegetation and so forth.
When an acceptable light breeze was blowing, the user stood with the wind at his back and repeatedly tossed the contents of the tray up in the air a short distance. This allowed the breeze to carry away the lighter unwanted material while the heavier grains fell back into the tray. This process continued until all the grain had been similarly cleaned.
A winnowing fan was constructed more like a sieve and could be fan-shaped or circular. The floor inside the bentwood frame, which was about 5 inches high, was made of finely woven wooden splint rather than solid wood. The winnowing fan, which was also shaken back and forth, allowed the dust and dirt to fall out of the bottom and blow away while retaining the grains of wheat which were too large to fit through the small holes.
It should be noted that early barns were built so that the large doors on either side of the barn floor could be fully opened to take advantage of the prevailing wind blowing across the barn floor to help facilitate the winnowing process.
Putting the grain into sacks
With a pile of cleaned wheat grain on the floor — which was covered with tarps or blankets to keep the grain from falling through the cracks between the floorboards — it was time to put it into sacks to transport it to a location for grinding into flour. This, however, was easier said than done.
The farmer had to scoop the grain into a thin linen grain sacks, which most likely had been made by his wife from thread she had spun herself. The problem here, however, was that as he scooped the grain into the sacks, the fabric collapsed in a most uncooperative manner. To stabilize the opening the farmer used a grain bag opener. This simple tool consisted of a wooden bar about 14 inches in length. A hole was drilled near each end of the bar into which were inserted the ends of a thin piece of wood bent into a semi-circular shape. Small pieces of pointed metal were inserted into the ends of the wooden bar which caught the fabric of the bag and spread it open. Then the scooping could begin in earnest.
Because the wife had laboriously crafted the grain sacks, she wanted them returned from the mill, and not just anyone’s sacks — HERS! This could be assured in a variety of ways.
The most common method was simply to letter the farmer’s name on the bag with paint or asphaltum, the latter being a thinned down tar which was very durable. In many instances farmers created a stencil with their name and sometimes the farm or town. Still others carved stamps out of blocks of wood. Often such stamps included folksy motifs such as eagles, stars, hearts, tulips, horses, crescent moons and similar devices. These stamps were dipped into paint or asphaltum and applied to the grain sacks.
Yet another method of identification was to have the local blacksmith make a branding iron with the bag owner’s initials. This branding iron would be heated and then applied to the fabric to lightly scorch the initials into the surface of bag. Whatever the method employed, farmers were generally able to retrieve their own sacks from the mill.
Milling
The dried grain was stored in a small, free-standing granary building. Because of the heavy dust present within the granary, a wooden shovel — typically shaped from a single piece of wood — was used to take grain in and out of the structure. Using a metal shovel would risk striking a spark, igniting the grain dust and causing a fire.
Next came the milling process itself. Before the construction of grist mills in an area — which were typically some of the first businesses created in an area of settlement — residents were forced to use querns (from the Middle English word cwerne for hand mill) to grind grain.
Such mills — usually brought from Pennsylvania — were few and far between in the Ohio Country, and settlers often had to travel long distances to use one.
Querns consisted of two pieces of stone — a bedstone (also called a saddle quern) and a runner stone (also called a muller, rubber or handstone). The bedstone, which did not move, was chiseled out to accommodate the circular runner stone on top. It was traditionally carved to incorporate a spout where the ground flour was discharged into bags.
The runner stone, about 18 inches across and with a large hole in the center, was carved with a handhold on either side, allowing it to be lifted off the bedstone to collect any remaining flour. The runner stone was also mounted with a heavy wrought iron lever on top which was secured with melted lead into a hole drilled into the stone.
The user(s) poured the grain to be ground into the large hole in the center of the runner stone, then began pushing that stone around and around using the lever on top. The flour produced by the grinding action worked its way outward from the center of the runner stone to the inner edges of the bedstone. After the grain had all been ground, the runner stone was lifted off and the flour was swept from the recess of the bedstone and out through the spout to the bag.
If all that sounds like one heck of a lot of hard work … well, like everything else in pioneer America, it was. That’s why far more pioneers referred to these devices as “sweat mills” rather than querns.
