Order of the Day’s Work
Our habit was to begin quite early in the morning, enclose the booth with the tent cover, and set to work threshing; finishing the first filling, or pile, about midday. In the afternoon we began a second pile, first heaping the already threshed grain to right and left, and behind the threshers.
I have said that on the ground under the second section of the stage, a second tent cover was spread to catch the cobs. A part of this tent cover was drawn in under the edge of the booth to help carpet the floor of the booth.
At the end of the day we turned our attention to the pile of cobs; and with our thumbs we shelled off every grain that clung to the cobs. From the cobs of a day’s threshing we collected about as many grains of corn as would fill a white man’s hat. This was taken into the booth and thrown on the pile of threshed grain.
We now disposed of the grain for the night. If we had gotten through threshing rather early in the day, we bore the newly threshed grain in baskets into the lodge, and emptied it into a bull boat.
If we had gotten through our threshing rather late in the day, we made the door of the booth tight, and left the grain on the booth floor throughout the night.
The Cobs
The day’s threshing over, we attended to the cobs. I have said that we shelled off any kernels that clung to them after threshing, so that they were now quite clean of grain.
All day long, as we threshed, we had watched that no horses got at the cobs to trample and nibble them, or that any dog ran over them, or any children played in them. Then, in the evening, if the weather was fine, and there was little wind, one of my mothers or I carried the cobs outside of the village to a grassy place and heaped them in a pile about five feet high. A pile of cobs of such a height I usually gathered from a day’s threshing.