August 1, 1900, we thrashed oats today. Got 1,110 bu. Cost 2¢ per bu. 28 people ate dinner here today. I pitched. Grandma DeLapp was here.
Pitching is when the person throws the oat sheaves into the thresher.
Mary DeLapp was one of the many women who would have been there helping Sarah Bench prepare a large dinner to feed so many people. Visiting Sari Nicks and her older daughter Cora was also there to help, while her husband Bob and boys Scott and Porter would have been helping the men. Jesse’s sister Rosa would have been helping as well, but she also would be busy taking care of baby Hazel and maybe keeping an eye on Sari’s youngest girl Delia and any other visiting children.
The total for 1,110 bushels of oats at $0.02 is $2,331. Running that through an inflation calculator, $2,331 in 1900 is equivalent in purchasing power to $69,926.95 in 2018. Jesse doesn’t specify, but that production might have been for just the Bench family. It is possible that tenants showed up with their oats to have them threshed and they split the cost of the threshing machine service, or perhaps James Bench paid for the service and it was a perk for his tenants. It is unfortunate that Jesse does not mention all of the people in attendance, whether the Frazier family showed up, and if all of his siblings and their spouses were there.
Oat production was at its peak at the end of the nineteenth century. In the mid-1800s, farmers switched from using oxen to horses in the field, and the horses needed to eat oats whereas oxen only needed grass. When horses were slowly replaced by machines, the need for oats also decreased.
Oddly, this is the only time in Jesse’s eight-year diary that he mentions a threshing machine, and the only time he mentions an oat crop.
Below is a description of threshing day on the farm:
Here is a steam-powered thresher and men pitching the oat sheaves:
