"Bringing in the Sheaves..."

At that time, combines for harvesting grain were new and not much used. Most farmers used binders to cut and bind the grain in bundles which were called sheaves. These sheaves were stacked in the field in shocks of about a dozen each. After a few days or weeks a commercial thresherman would bring his big machine to thresh out the grain, put it in burlap bags and bale the straw. But often the weather would be too wet and stormy, so instead of stacking the sheaves in the field, it would be brought into the barn and stacked there until the thresherman arrived sometime later. This is what I always did as it was much safer in this climate where the weather is so changeable in the summertime.