2011 Grand Prairie Rice Festival
antique rice threshing machine demonstration

At Hazen, Arkansas, October 29, 2011

Seth Skarda and his pal, Mason Sickel knowledgeable way beyond their years, set up and demonstrated a forties-era, antique rice-threshing machine, more popularly known in the Delta as a “thrashin' m'chine,” at the recent 35th Grand Prairie Rice Festival. Power to the machine was provided via a “flat-belt,” from a 1949 Model 90 Oliver tractor which cranks out 50 horsepower. The demonstration was live history for all to see. The pictures will advance every nine seconds or you can manually operate the gallery the the controls below.

See the stories that go with festival pictures at Corndancer dot-com and Weekly Grist for the Eyes and Mind.

 

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  A fully operational forties-era McCormick-Deering rice threshing machine owned, restored, and operated by Seth Skarda. His supporting cast includes his pal, Mason Sickel. The pair operated the machine and made the demonstration happen.
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  A 1940 International Harvester "bob" truck probably a model KB-5, is loaded with harvested sheaves of rice, still on the stalk, ready for a good "thrashin." This is reminiscent of how it was done in the thirties and forties.
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  Seth Skarda sets up the machine.
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  The machine is now up and running. In the background, Mason Sickel does the honors with a pitchfork and pitches the sheaves of rice into the conveyor which feeds the machine. The machine separates the stalks from the rice which fed into this old pickup body trailer made espcially for this demonstration.
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  The machine, when operating properly, tries its best to shake itself to pieces. Here it is spitting out the stalks, recently separated from the rice to which they gave life.
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  The pile of stalks grows. The whole operation is admittedly messy.
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  Mason Sickel pitches, while the wind carries bits and pieces of stalks and other detritus generated by the threshing process.
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  Power to operate the threshing machine is provided via a flat belt by this restored 1949 Oliver Model 90 tractor which puts out 50 horsepower. That was a very high power output in that day and time.
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  You can see the flat belt from the tractor to the input shaft on the machine in the foreground.
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  Ain't it a mess!!
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  And the rice comes out here.