310 RURAL MICHIGAN 



end of the improvised drag, the knotty part serving 

 to hohl it firmly in place; and with this home-made 

 harrow, the work of getting in wheat went on." ^ 



The garnered grain was threshed with a flail, like 

 a heavy pole ten feet long, broken in two in the mid- 

 dle and fastened together again with a leather string 

 hinge."' The grain was winnowed first "with a hand 

 fan" shaped like the half of a round table "with a 

 box-like side eight inches high running around the 

 rounding edge. The fan was of tightly woven splints 

 for lightness, and it had two handles on the rim. 

 I put on about a peck of wheat at a time, took hold 

 of the handles, put the rounding side against me, 

 then tossed it up and down with a sort of flapping 

 motion, and the wheat falling quicker than the chaff, 

 would lie on the fan and the chaff float on the floor." ^ 

 In due time appeared mechanical fanning-mills for 

 cleaning the grain, factories for the manufacture of 

 which sprang up at several points in the southern 

 part of the State. Mechanical contrivances for 

 threshing grain and horse-power for operating. them 

 appeared prior to the Civil War. One John Lee- 

 .land of St. Joseph County is said to have (1835) 

 "made for his own use a threshing-machine which 

 was worked by a crank turned by hand-power (two 

 men), and it would thresh about thirty bushels in 

 a day." ^ A little later a "harvester" was invented 

 by a Kalamazoo farmer. "Phifer's wheel gang-plow 



1 Ibid., XXXI, 199. 

 ^Ibid., XIV, 623. 

 ^Ibid., XVIII, 515. 



