It’s Dam Good!

Yes, it was literally a dam.  One of the few old mill ponds in this part of Ontario that was still running into the 50’s utilizing water power for a grist mill.  I had almost forgotten about the old mill, but we had been out for a crop dusting ride around the country, when we got to talking about the farmers getting the fields ready for planting.  Then we passed by an old building that was used for a specialty store selling scented candles and porcelain dolls.  The old building was, in a previous life, an old feed mill for the farms in the area.  And then I recalled how many years ago, I helped my father take grain into the mill in Brussels. 

It was on the muddy Maitland River in the town of Brussels.  I have no idea exactly when the dam was constructed on the river, but I would think it was in or around the 1850’s at about the same time that the pioneer settlers established the village, and that was a good source of cheap power for the early flour and feed mill.  It was built near the corner of present day James St. and Market St. in the town of Brussels, and it created a mill-pond,  not unlike the picture I have on the top of my blog.  This picture I have here was taken on a conservation area a few kilometres from the town of Exeter.  However this dam was built much later, and it has a road over the top of the dam.

My mind is wandering again and now getting back to the dam subject in Brussels.  I first became aware of the dam at a very young age, probably around eight or ten years old.  As I had explained in previous blogs, we harvested the grain, and stored it in the granary for use later in the year.  It was used for animal and chicken feed through-out the winter months.  The chickens would eat the oats, wheat, or barley just as it was.  But the grain had to be ground up for the pigs and cows.  I know we had a small grinder on the farm, and it worked well, but only for small quantities of feed.  When you had to feed the whole bunch of animals, then that was when the slugging started. 

From as early as I can remember, all us kids pitched in and helped to take the grain into the grist mill for grinding.  The grain was shoveled into burlap bags, which weighed in at about 100 pounds each, that’s about 44 kilograms, and loaded it on to the back of the old 1/2 ton truck that Dad had.  The truck would hold about 12 or 15 bags of grain, so when everybody piled on to the back for the drive into town, the truck appeared to be going constantly uphill!  It’s a wonder the suspension springs didn’t collapse. 

Then the drive into town to the mill.  I can’t remember the name of the guy who operated the mill at that time, but I’m sure someone will tell me.  The truck was backed up to the loading dock, and then with all the little hands helping, the bags were unloaded and dumped into an elevator bin.  If the machinery wasn’t running at the time, then that was the que for the operator to open the sluice door and allow the water to run into the power wheel and get all the belts and pulleys humming.  I can remember running around to the back of the mill and watching the equipment running and the water falling over the power wheel.   Of course, Dad would tell us kids to stay away from the water and not fall in.  Never did fall, I think we were smarter than that.  But I can remember how fascinated I was observing all the belts and pulleys, power shafts, and the bagging equipment all working in perfect harmony.  If I close my eyes, and listen real hard, I can still hear all the sounds coming from that old mill.  It sends shivers up my back!  Just about all the equipment in use at the time was all made by hand, but it surely served its purpose.

After all the grain was ground up, and bagged, and then reloaded on to the back of the old truck, it was taken back to the farm for the animals.  I never did know how much the operator charged Dad for the grinding job, but I’m sure it wasn’t a lot, even in those days.  After the bags were unloaded into the barn, then it would be ready for dinner.  That is, dinner for the animals.  All this ground up grain was called ‘chop’, and it was fed to the animals.   I don’t know why it was called chop, but it was mixed up with leftover skimmed milk, from the milking operation, and water to create a sloppy mess to feed the pigs or cattle.  I guess chop rhymed with slop, and that’s just about as good as it gets.  This event had to be done every week or two through-out the year.  Just another slugging job that had to be done.  We also had a small rolling machine, powered by a gasoline engine.  The grain was shoveled into the roller, and it just sort of flattened out the kernel somewhat, to make it easier for the animals to eat the stuff.  Some of the farms around the area had what was called a hammer mill.  It was a much bigger machine, driven by the farm tractor either by a belt and pulley system, or a direct PTO (power take off) connection on the rear of the tractor.  It would grind the grain up very good, and a hell of a lot faster than we could with our little machines.  However, we never did have one of those machines as long as I had lived on the farm.  Now-a-days, all the grinding and mixing is done at the big commercial mills, and trucked to the farming operation, where it is blown into large containers or silos, and is automatically fed by computer driven feeders, to all the animals.  Not much slugging in those operations.  More brain, less brawn, I suppose.

Bringing in the Sheaves

Give us this day our daily bread means a whole lot more on the farm.  Most of the flour we use in Canada comes from the thousands of farms in the prairies.  There was thousands of farms here in Ontario that also grew wheat, oats, barley, and corn.  Maybe not as big, but just as important to each and every one of them.  Dad grew many acres or wheat and oats, but it was used mostly for animal feed.  I was told that the year I was born, 1942, Dad purchased one of the first if not the first combine that appeared in southern Ontario.  It had a 12 foot deck on it, and a chrysler 6 cylinder flat-head engine for a power plant.  It had to shipped from the west in pieces on a train.  My Dad and his brother, Richard, assembled it and put it to good use for many years.   Most, if not all the combines in use today, have large tanks and augers on them to move and store the grain as it was being harvested from the fields.  This combine that my Dad had purchased, had a bagging device on it, so it required 2 men to run it.  Usually my Dad drove the machine, and my uncle Dick bagged the grain.  The bags of grain were pushed down a slide on the rear of the machine, and left there until the combine came to the end of the field.  At that point, uncle Dick pulled a trip rope which opened the gate at the bottom of the slide, and the bags would tumble out onto the field.  That was were the hired help, or us kids, came into the picture.  We would drive either a truck, or a tractor and trailer, and pick up all the bags of grain.  It was then taken to the barn to be put into the granary.  Very labour intensive, and I can remember taking part in the harvesting from the time I was able to lift those bags of grain.  Probably from the time I was 9 or 10 years old, and those bags weighed around 80  to 100 pounds each!  Many times it took two of us kids to lift those bags onto the truck or trailer.

I was told by my parents that during the early years, the 40’s, that the combine was hired by many of the local farmers to harvest their crops.  There was so much work to do, that during many summers of harvesting, Dad and uncle Dick were working 7 days a week!  And since no one had seen this new fangled machine working in this part of Ontario before, hundreds of people would come out to see it operate every weekend.  Mother told us later, that some Sundays, people would be lined up all along the fences, like crows on a wire, watching this behemoth gobble up the crops!  Quite a sight, I would imagine.  I would like to have seen a picture of that.

Many of the farms around us were still doing the harvest by cutting the grain by using a binder, which put the grain into sheaves, then stooking it by hand, then bringing it up to the barn to the stationary threshing machine.  Then the sheaves were forked into the mouth of the big old thresher, were the grain and straw was separated.  The thresher was driven by a tractor and belt system.  Quite often the grain was blown by pipes directly into the granary, and the straw was blown by a huge fan and pipes, directly into the barn as well.  For many years, we kids would help with the neighbouring farms do their harvesting.  We would work all week for 10 bucks or so, never kept track of how many hours you worked,  but it was our own money!  After the binder had cut the grain and tied it into sheaves,  we would walk back and forth across the fields, stooking all those sheaves.  A stook was merely a tent like structure made up of several sheaves set on the ground in a circle and left for a few days.  It was done that way to allow the grain to dry out a bit more, keep the grain off the ground, and if any weeds were mixed in with the straw, they would dry out and hopefully blow away before threshing took place.

When threshing day came, there was usually 20 to 30 people on site.  The stooks had to be picked up by fork, thrown onto the wagon, then taken to the thrashing machine by the barn.  Then more pitching the sheaves into the thresher, and then making sure the grain and straw was all taken care of.  By the end of each day, everyone was covered with dirt and dust, but, man when the supper table was loaded up, everyone dug in like wolves.  After supper, many of us would find the nearest swimming hole in a nearby river, and jump in.  This took place during the 50’s,  but it was fading out fast as many farmers were purchasing combines at the time.  The old-fashioned threshing crews were all but gone, fading into the past.  Can’t say that I miss it, because I don’t!  Keep on threshing.