It takes quite a bit of work to get ready for the annual Camp Creek Threshers show outside of Waverly. One process involves harvesting wheat for the threshing machines. We visited with Fred Fleming ...

When this country was new and farming meant the difference between life and starvation, the men and women who tilled the ground planted winter heat, tended it through the spring and prepared for the ...

For centuries, farmers cut and moved hay by hand. Then horses made the work quicker and a bit easier. In the early 1900s, machines like the automatic baler changed everything. At Big Spring Farm Days, ...

Matt Folstad had an idea: Rather than mow his 2 acres of yard every summer, why not plow it up and plant wheat on it? That was the start of his backyard threshing bee. Folstad, 38, works as a truck ...

Harvesting small grains on the farm was always a major task each summer. Farmers needed to cut the wheat or oats, tie them into bundles and when dried, load the bundles onto horse-drawn racks to bring ...

Ron Finster of Janesville looks out over his huge threshing machine before the demonstration and wheat threshing contest held at the 52nd annual Rock River Thresheree Aug. 31, 2008.

“It’s exciting to see how it went down back in the day,” said Christel Jenkins as she stood under a tree and watched wheat being separated, cleaned and bundled.

It makes one wonder what we might put up there next. Will it be hay balers and grain trucks or Studebakers and hippie vans? One cow on a hilltop in New Salem, a giant bison guarding Jamestown and an ...