Fur tha 'wun wud clean corn.'
Weel tha latin phrase "docendo discimus" iz a great yin fur aa bloggers. Fur an aul han tould me that this sayin, like a locth o yins, cums fae agriculture. Tae be mere precise tha aul threshing barns.
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| A Threshing Barn |
The extract below is from The crooked lake review blog, entitled 'Remember the Old Fanning Mill' by Richard Palmer (reproduced with permission)
Before the introduction of threshing machines, grain was removed from the stalk heads by trampling or flailing. This operation was done usually on a wooden floor in a barn. Threshing barns were built for the purpose of storing grain sheaves from harvest time until the slack winter season when the fully mature grain could be separated from the dry straw. These barns were built around a central threshing floor where the bundles of ripened grain could be spread to a uniform thickness and treaded upon by hooves of horses or oxen or pounded by farm hands using wooden flails to loosen grain kernels from heads of the cereal plant stalks.
When most of the kernels had been loosened from the grain heads, the straw was lifted off with forks and stored for use as bedding for livestock. The remaining material on the threshing floor was scooped up to be winnowed when there was a breeze. Threshing barns usually had wide doors which could be opened at either end of the center section to allow a favorable wind to waft through the building. The chaff, bits of straw and the loose grain from the threshing floor were put in a winnowing basket or tray and tossed upward into a breeze where currents of air carried the straw pieces, lighter chaff and dust farther away, as the heavier kernels of grain fell more directly downward into a basket or onto a blanket.
An I jist fun oot ma great granny haed a trashing barn,
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