RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY 



like nearly all of our improved farm machinery, was of 

 American invention. It is only within the past thirty 

 years that reapers have been used at all commonly on 

 the stony side hill fields of Litchfield County. 



After the grain was cradled it was bound in bundles, 

 and when sufficiently dry was laboriously threshed by 

 hand. A flail is one of the simplest of farming tools, 

 and yet its manipulation requires great skill. Two 

 smooth, rounded sticks are tied together by a thong, 

 preferably of eel's skin, and the trick is to grasp the 

 handle and then rhythmically thump out the grain with 

 the swinging end and not thump your own head or the 

 person of your threshing mate. Yankee ingenuity soon 

 contrived an easier way of threshing, and water-power 

 threshers early came into use. These did away with 

 the labor of threshing by hand, but the straw was 

 chopped up and spoiled. With the invention of the 

 horse-power thresher, improvements were made so that 

 the straw came out in shape to use as desired. One 

 successful farmer, now living in Canaan, has recently 

 told me that seventy years ago his father raised forty 

 acres of oats, threshed them by "water thresher" and 

 carted them to Winsted, where they were sold for 

 twenty-six cents a bushel. In the early times the 

 threshed grain was winnowed by pouring from one re- 

 ceptacle to another and letting the wind carry away the 

 chaff. Or on a windy day the big barn doors were 



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