Reding Family Threshing 1910 2022

So I think our farm is about traditions and it's a special farm because we bring people and traditions together here, I think, and that's something special to see now because I think a lot of farms today are based on size. They can build their operation, how much land can they gain? You know, and that's not my way of thinking. I think as long as I can make a living, I'm happy and I can do what I want to do and that's use horses. on the farm where I think a lot of other people are very motivated to buy into the financial part, maybe they lose sight of how real they are, they lose sight of the tradition.

There are so many people who come up to me and say Don't stop what you're doing and I guess that's the reason I keep fighting because it's China and it's a pleasure for me to put it all together. Who would believe that you could get a bunch of people together in the field for a day like that and put in place the operation that we always used to do when we threshed a lot, we had threshed up to 200 acres some years and started on Friday evening. late and we were hoping it'd be over over the weekend and you'd come out after dinner on Friday and everyone was new to the operation and you'd be wondering how we're going to make this work, nothing would just be working right and at four in the afternoon clock on the Later you'd be running around, it was that easy, it seemed like after a while everything fell into place and I think it's still the same way today, but this is the first time we've run this machine.

Just done this spring, the restoration was completed in June and we took it to the bike's centennial celebration and put it there, but we didn't have any packages to shake. All you do when you're fanning packages is the folder. He places them in Rose when he cuts and ties the grain and by hand you have to place those rows so that the weather does not affect them so that they do not lie flat on the ground and you put about eight packets on a porch as if you had placed a deck of cards exactly just the same and you would have laid out all the rows and let them cure that way and then if the weather turns bad it won't hurt them anymore if you're not using a porch.

With a loader, you can place the loaders almost anywhere and the cart can turn anywhere when tilted to load a load and pick up loaders from the field, but if you're using a loader, those rows should be reasonably straight. because that loader can't go in and out very fast and we've always used rod loaders here as much as we could, since there wasn't much harvest last fall, there were no bundles left anywhere, so we decided we'd cut a little this fall and I had done it here at home. In fact, this machine belonged to what they call the Fin Union in Troshua, which was a group of farmers who combined their operations and all worked together.

The land was like a community agreement and finally everyone separated and dedicated themselves to farming on their own and this machine was kind of abandoned after they sold it and they never paid for it and they went and brought it home, but everything was already worn out. at that time, so it sat there, I don't know from the 1930s until I got it, I don't know what year it was, but probably sometime in the '80s and they wanted someone to take it and make it. something with it, so I decided to restore it and it took me 25 years.

I think to finish everything, we have done everything inside, outside, all the sheet metal is new, inside is new, all the wood is new, the trough when you look. On the front end, it's all new sheet metal and new wood, and a lot of the parts we had to make are repairable, whether you make them yourself or take old parts off other machines and fix what you can, like the All of that was built with sheet metal and a lot of it was done by hand. We had a sheet metal shop in Calgary that did a lot of the work and when they could, some of it they couldn't do, we had to do it. make them drawings so they could make all the sides that are new all the side where you see silver color which is a new sheet of metal underneath which is a completely new sheet of metal.

I saw those little holes where the supports are. I could do some of that. but some of the work they had to do was also where the hand holes are where you see the plates on the side. I cut those holes, they're six inch holes, but we were able to use hand saws to do that and we used the old pattern sheets to know where the holes were supposed to go. I couldn't work on it continuously and you would take a sheet metal to the body shop to build it and it could be two months before you got it back.

They do it when they also had free time and that's why it took 25 years. I just worked on it periodically and you can only work on those things for a limited time and then you have to quit, it just starts to get you down, your nerves start to keep working on you and then you just have to quit everything and forget about it for a while and The scale I had was a special wear part that wasn't built after 1926. And I like the way it worked, so I I restored and put it in this machine. The top part is new and the auger is new.

That auger is an odd size at the top that you can see, it lifts the grain into the wagon. It's a seven and a half inch auger. Nobody builds a seven and a half inch auger by fighting anymore. I had to specially make it in Manitoba. a piece of equipment in Rosenor that was made by rolling fighting for the augers and he rolled it for me and the tube I had to get made in Lethbridge. The only shop that could do it was Charlton and Hill and Lethbridge, which was an old feeder. a different machine, it was the particular brand that I wanted to put here and I even made the cylinder wider on this machine, the original cylinder was 36 inches on this machine and I put a 40 on it that I had from another old machine and this machine is 40 inches by 64 inches and that means the width of the cylinder is 40 inches and the body where the gap is made is 64 inches.

It is the largest machine the Minneapolis company built after '28, they never built more of these. Smaller machines and a different model, were designed completely different. One thing about this machine is that the people who place the packages in it don't have to be as careful when placing the packages, where on some machines the packages have to be exactly one behind the other in On this machine, at most, they can stack them a little and it doesn't bother the separation part at all. That's what I was wondering too because they didn't seem that neat, no, they were stacking them there. one on top of the other and everything and I didn't care because the bundles were nice and dry and we knew nothing was coming out of the back going up the hay stack and my dad said you always wanted the heads to go away.

At first it was okay, which was It didn't always happen, no, there was one that entered the other way around. I realized yesterday. I don't think anyone who drove the wagons really knew that telling the guys this machine is many times by the old timers are known as the Cadillac of

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machines, so I wanted this one because I knew it was the last few years that They built them, oh yeah, and because of the capacity, I had Run Minneapolis machines before, so I knew how they work. For flat belts, this is the drive belt that drives the entire mechanism and it is a belt that is 150 feet long if you measure it on all sides and is a little longer than you would normally use on a machine of this size, They usually used 125 foot belts with gasoline tractors, but this belt was designed to be used with a steam engine and that is the reason it is 150 feet long and the reason it is so long is to keep the steam engine away from the engine in case of fire with a steam engine because it sparks from the steam supply and is a little to one side, it will not reach the pile of straw if there is a spark plug and right now, while we are in line with it right now, but it's going to change you and you see it pretty quickly it doesn't come back to the other side without repair there's a lot we can do about it we have to put up with what we have we'll put the screen here pretty quickly on the stack and the reason for the screen is to keep the sparks from flying, that tells me how much steam pressure is in the boiler right now, we weigh about 130 pounds, not a little less than 129.

If we get to 140, 243 pounds of four leaf valves will come loose and They'll release some pressure, we're still good, so Robin, could you tell me again how much wood this thing requires? Probably a ton and a half and it doesn't matter what type of wood, a pound of wood. and a pound of oak a pound of oak a pound of popper a pound of whatever they all have the same amount of heat just their density is different yeah that way one weighs more than the other you can use almost anything there is there like wood Yes, yes, the water is different now, isn't it?

You have to be very particular about what we use for water. It explains well if we have the wrong water there, for example, the water from our well. The boiler will start priming after a while, that means the water is running out. steam rises up the chimney and you can't let that be a dangerous matter, what do you mean the water rises with the steam? Well, it goes up with the steam through the dome and straight through the engine, and if you get too much water. in the cylinder you can blow up the cylinder head because the water doesn't even give steam Gibbs, this is almost like the old skim locomotives, they were also very particular about the water they put in when they approached a water tank there.

There was a chart on the water tank and they had water treatment blocks and the chart said you put so many bricks of this and so many bricks of that for so many gallons of water and we are using water treatment here, but in moderation when we get to the In the end, we will probably use more certificates and you have to take a course to be able to operate a traction motor and then you have to put in 100 hours of operation before you get your license. Oh, there's nothing to play with. out there without a doubt they are not toys, ah, they can be a faithful servant or they can be certain death, they can be your worst nightmare if things go wrong, so you know you must have the training to execute those things. go wrong, well, the boiler explodes for one thing, it's the worst nightmare you could ever have because if a boiler explodes someone is going to die, there's no doubt about it or the steering wheel could fly to pieces.

I guess you're not rubbing as hard, okay? just start this started here we found the shim, yeah, oh, you got it right, if it runs against that arm, it's going to make things worse. Where's that big one in the back of that other truck? You have to fit that to make it escape from that arm. I can mechanic Robin come on oh I know you can that's why you're not doing anything the spare plugs are there too if you need them yeah you put those two in and then see what happens okay guys. Alright, we're not sure when we are when you drive with this flat belt, you usually try to drive with a twist on the belt and the reason for this is that if the wind catches the belt, it won't throw it off. too bad and it also makes the machine run in the right direction because most tractors were designed to run clockwise on the belt pulley and these machines run counter clockwise on its drive pulley, so you had to reverse it too, so when you put a twist on it, that reversed the belt.

I don't think we have a Twist, we don't have a Twist on it, you know, okay, put a Twist on the belt. here and don't try to throw it against the pulley like that, you just want to walk with it, okay, it's ready, okay, when we were

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with the diesel tractor or the gasoline tractor, depending on which one we were using, people would come up and say: why don't you have a steam engine in the threshing machine? Well, I do. I don't have a very simple one and I said I'd like to find one but I can't find it well as it turns out he had a guy helping him, his name was Keith Colbert and he had come from Manitoba and heard this anyway.

One day while we were talking about it with other people, he said I was driving a guy named Bob Anderson who was running for the legislature in Manitoba, who was campaigning, and he said we stopped at this guy's house and His name was Gus, look up where we stopped and he said there was a steam engine in the yard. He said: I wonder what happened to that steam engine. I said, "Well, why don't you find out? Anyway, yeah, I said I'll do it anyway." but anyway Bob Anderson said well, he said, you know, he said he hadn't seen Gussique since we were at his house campaigning and he said, you know, he said Gus was an NDP or he wasn't a conservative, but he said he still He listened to us, he didn't kick us out of the yard, but he said, I'll find out what happened to that steam engine, so he did, he drove to Bose, it's yours, where the steam engine was, which is north and east of Winnipeg and What he discovered was that Gusseeker died but his wife was still alive and his widow lived there at the place where the steam engine was and the steam engine was still in thebad, yeah, I just want to thank everyone for coming and keeping the Traditions alive.

I know it's a lot of work, we've been working for a month on this, getting the dragons and the equipment and the horses ready, and most of it is lining up people and on the phone, and that's a big deal to organize nowadays, but yeah, I just want to thank everyone for coming and hopefully we'll do it again in the future so thank you, you did a lot of work and challenges, you know, over the years, a lot of work, a lot of maintenance, a lot of money. but honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way because this is a special farm.