Anyone with a love of the history, products and memorabilia of the International Harvester Company won’t want to miss the upcoming Manitoba Threshermen’s Reunion and Stampede.

For the first time, the Western Canada IH Collectors Club (Chapter 38) — a mix of Canadians and Americans with in-depth knowledge of the company and its tractors, trucks and farm equipment — will be at the four-day show at Austin July 26 to 29.

The IHC club is part of a broader organization with established chapters across the globe, all intent on preserving the history and heritage of the International Harvester brand, including the McCormick family history.

“We’re very excited on a number of fronts to bring the IHC 38 to Manitoba,” said Elliot Sims, a spokesman for the Manitoba Agricultural Museum.

He said it will bring a whole new group of visitors to the show plus it adds a brand new attraction for those who attend every year. Coming with them will be a large array of unique vehicles, tractors and farm equipment. Registrations were still arriving at the beginning of July but about 50 IHC exhibitors were expected.

“It’s equipment coming from other provinces that has never been displayed in Manitoba before.”

IHC was a unique farm machinery brand and its legacy lives on among all those who continue to appreciate and care for the tractors, trucks and implements it produced.

A key benefit in bringing IHC 38 here will be all the knowledge sharing about these vintage pieces, because that’s fundamental to keeping them in great shape.

“One of the largest challenges is just transferring the knowledge not necessarily just of the machines but how to operate and repair them,” said Sims, adding that the tools and processes used to fix and operate them aren’t taught anywhere in programs.

“The only way that knowledge is transferred from one generation to the next is through mentorship,” he said.

“That’s what keeps that heritage alive and keeps that community growing so there’s more people aware of the significance of the company and what it has done to develop our agricultural heartland here in Western Canada.”

About 10,000 visitors are expected on the grounds of the Manitoba Agricultural Museum over the span of this year’s 64th annual celebrations.

Other main attractions include the daily Pioneer Power Parade — Canada’s largest parade dedicated to operational agricultural and vintage vehicles — the stampede, voted Rodeo of the Year last year by the Canadian Cowboys Association, and the Manitoba Clydesdale Classic Show.

This year’s show farrier competitions will be back, plus all the regular demos of blacksmithing, flour grinding and other farm and household techniques of yesteryear.

This year’s fashion show will feature special-occasion wear of days gone by.

For more information log on to the Manitoba Threshermen’s Reunion & Stampede website.

This article first appeared on AGCanada.com.

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With the help of a wooden Nichols & Shepard thresher and a 1912 Rumely tractor, Helmut Neufeld, Garth Crooks and their team of threshermen get ready to lend their efforts to break the Guinness World Record for the “most threshing machines operating simultaneously.” In this video, get an up-close look at each machine as the two men talk about their history and what it took to prepare the antiques for the Manitoba Threshermen’s Reunion & Stampede held in Austin, Manitoba, at the Manitoba Agricultural Museum on July 31, 2016.

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What does it take to put on the world’s largest pioneer harvest? According to Elliot Sims, one of the co-chairs and organizers of Harvesting Hope: A World Record to Help the Hungry, start with tens of thousands of man-hours, over 800 volunteers, nearly 150 machines and you’re on the right track.

The range of antique machines on the Manitoba Agricultural Museum grounds at the Manitoba Threshermen’s Reunion & Stampede in Austin, Manitoba is almost as far-reaching as the volunteer effort required to operate them. Machinery from every major museum in Western Canada and owners from as far away as Edmonton, Alta. – even Iowa in the U.S. – and volunteers from British Columbia, Newfoundland and Florida have all gathered on an area larger than four football fields to help break a Guinness World Record.

With video files from Lorraine Stevenson

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Harvesting Hope, scheduled for July 31, 2016 at the Manitoba Threshermen’s Reunion, has announced its goal of having 125 antique threshing machines running simultaneously to harvest a field of wheat.

Organizers expect to have at least 500 volunteers from about 100 communities, with net proceeds to benefit the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and the Manitoba Agricultural Museum.

Also, spokesperson Ayn Wilcox said Nov. 24 in a release, “we’re asking all Manitobans to join our team in the fight against global hunger by supporting this once-in-a-lifetime event through our community champions program.”

Through that program, organizers said, donors can be named as a Threshing Team Sponsor ($1,000), as Adopting an Acre of wheat ($500), or as a Friend of Harvesting Hope ($250). Donors at those levels will get a “special invitation” to the Harvesting Hope event. Any contributions over $20 get a tax receipt.

Businesses are also invited to support Harvesting Hope as either a community champion or a corporate partner, organizers said. For more information or to donate, visit harvestinghope.ca.

So far, Wilcox said, “every day since our official launch in August, individuals are contacting us to offer threshing machines, equipment and resources.”

The threshing bee world record was last broken Aug. 15 at Festival de la Curd at St-Albert, Ont., with 111 machines operating. The previous record, 41, was set in 2013 at another Canadian Foodgrains Bank fundraiser during the Olde Tyme Harvest at Langenburg, Sask., about 30 km west of Russell.

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The demonstration of old-school threshing was held at the Red River Exhibition fairgrounds as a preview of Harvesting Hope, an event scheduled for July 31 next year at Austin during the Manitoba Threshermen’s Reunion.

Harvesting Hope organizers expect to have over 500 volunteers from about 100 communities, sourcing equipment from as far away as Ontario and Minnesota, with net proceeds to benefit the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and the Manitoba Agricultural Museum.

To break the record for the world’s largest threshing bee, organizers said, all threshing machines involved must operate simultaneously and continuously for at least 15 minutes, and must be driven by a steam engine, tractor or stationary engine built between 1890 and 1950.

The standing record was just set on Saturday (Aug. 15) at Festival de la Curd at St-Albert, Ont., with 111 machines operating, breaking the previous record of 41, set at another Foodgrains Bank fundraiser in 2013, at the Olde Tyme Harvest at Langenburg, Sask.

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The issue contained several photos from the Threshermen’s Reunion at Austin. Encouraged by another excellent turnout, the directors were considering expansion and were hopeful that expansion to the facilities could be carried out as a centennial project for 1967.

U.S. farm leaders meeting in Washington were reportedly pleased with a report from the National Academy of Sciences recommending that the concepts of “no residue” and “zero tolerance” be dropped for pesticide registration. It proposed the terms “negligible” and “permissable” residue instead.

Aphids were appearing on late barley in the province and provincial entomologists recommended not spraying unless damage was serious. If so, the recommended treatment was 50 per cent malathion at 1-1/2 to two pints per acre, at a cost of about $2.

At the annual meeting of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association in Winnipeg, president Gerald Guichon expressed concern about high taxes and land prices putting a squeeze on beef producers.

Another photo in the issue showed Manitoba Agriculture Minister George Hutton and other officials officially opening the new kitchen and dining hall at Camp Wannakumback.

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In August 2013 a group at Langenburg, Sask. set a world record by having 41 machines working for 15 minutes, with funds raised from the event going to the CFGB for its work to end hunger overseas. Now the CFGB is teaming with the Threshermen’s Reunion to set a new record at its annual event in Austin on July 31, 2016.

Since they’ll need some time to prepare — and plenty of sheaves to pitch into 65 machines — the work will start this year and the organizations are calling for volunteers to help with the event, which will be called Harvesting Hope. Funds raised will be shared by the two organizations.

Work on the machines will start this May. Here’s part of their job description:

“We need people familiar with threshing machines, or mechanical people willing to learn quickly, to come to help get the machines ready to work. We’re happy for anyone willing to work for a day or two, or longer of course.”

“This harvest time, August or September, we plan to bind and store sheaves to be ready for 2016. We need people willing to work in a harvest bee. If you can operate a pitchfork — or are willing to learn — you can help. We’ll also need people to make meals to serve the harvest crew.”

“July 15 to Aug. 15, 2016 we’ll need volunteers to help set up for the event — run services of various kinds during the event — be part of threshing crews (we plan for 65 machines each of which needs five people working at it) — and then the cleanup work after the event is done. Again, there will be opportunities to help for a day, or longer of course.”

Interested volunteers are invited to a meeting at the Community Hall in Austin (across from the grain elevator) on March 14 at 10:30 a.m. For more information, contact Harold Penner at (204) 746-5135 or email manitoba@foodgrainsbank.ca.

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But a small exhibit at the Manitoba Agricultural Museum (MAM) reminds us again about the sort of work women did to get the farm laundry done in bygone days.

All kinds of sad irons, plus washboards, sock stretchers, galvanized tubs and mangles are included in MAM’s new ‘Drop Your Pants Here’ laundry exhibit, a pre-electrification era display of tools of a woman’s trade, when she had to wash clothes in cramped kitchens, sans plumbing, or anything else remotely labour reducing.

Forget cutesy clotheslines and oh-so-charming washtubs seen on Pinterest; drudgery ain’t something to get nostalgic over.

These are the donated artifacts from Manitoba families whose grandmothers knew all too well the mind-numbing and exhausting wash-iron-repeat job it was keeping kids and dad in clean clothes for school and Sunday.

Before the new-fangled stuff came along — electric irons, washing machines and dryers, perfumed laundry soap — moms spent an entire day, and often several days, hauling and heating water, bent over said washtub, scrubbing with soap made from lard and lye.

Then she’d tackle the ironing.

Once done, it was time to start over.

“I think after you’ve seen this exhibit, you’re not going to complain about doing laundry again,” says Tanya Wiegand, curator at MAM who created the display from artifacts gathered from the Austin-area museum’s extensive collections.

The display includes washboards of glass, possers, which were used like butter churns to agitate clothes, and steel and tin and square tubs that doubled as the family bathtub coupled with old-fashioned, finger-crushing mangles.

There’s a contraption you’d never guess by looking was even a washing machine. The bulky, hand-agitated Hamilton, Ontario-built Eclipse Washer is made of wood and dates to the mid- to late 1800s. A rarity among early washing machines still around now, it was a one-time status symbol for a homemaker, says Wiegand. It, too, was physically demanding to use.

Then there are the sad irons. Most think these old irons, that have reincarnated mostly as doorstops, are so named because the chore they performed made everyone depressed, says Wiegand.

“Actually, sad is an old English word for heavy or solid,” she said.

But, yes, ironing could make you sad. Unless the weather was fine on washday, clothes, towels, or sheets, seldom dried enough to iron (and early housewives lacking polyester would attempt them all). After you’d soaked, scrubbed and wrung everything out, it all got hung on the clothesline, and fence, and bushes in the yard and you just prayed it wouldn’t rain, says Wiegand. In the winter, it was hung on racks in the basement or attic.

An American woman devised the iron displayed that has a detachable wooden handle. It didn’t get hot and eased by a modicum the labour using a household device otherwise unchanged from the Middle Ages, says Wiegand.

“Even some of the smaller ones weighed 20 pounds,” she said. “Can you imagine ironing with a 20-pound iron?”

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Other advancements in household irons in the display are even larger, but hollow; these held charcoal to stay hot, and good luck not getting a mark on whatever you’d just painstakingly washed and dried. Another iron in the exhibit has an asbestos handle that stayed cooler. The gas irons are just scary. Then there are the electric irons, whose advent, along with washers and dryers, would reduce the labour of laundry.

(Is it any wonder that farm women led the charge for farm electrification in the last century?)

Drop Your Pants explains soap making or “saponification,” as the exhibit explains, which is the chemical reaction occurring when fat is mixed with alkali. This time of year farm families, butchering livestock, would make their household soap, notes Wiegand. And no one expected it would leave their dainties sweetly scented either. There’s a chamber pot in this exhibit too. Human urine was once used as a stain remover, and that’s no word of a lie.

“It was called chamber lye,” says Wiegand.

Schoolchildren visiting the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in spring do some laundry the old-fashioned way, along with other fun stuff like writing on slates in the one-room schoolhouse and bartering for candy in the site’s General Store.

They’ll never know the fresh hell Monday was, or however long it actually would take moms of the past to get the blessed thing done.

Those with fleeting memories of wringer washers, and handling wet laundry, especially in cold weather, will look on these artifacts in awe of what she accomplished, says Wiegand.

“We can all relate because we all still do laundry. This was women’s work. And they were doing lots of other things every day too. This gives you an idea of all the work the women had to do.”

Drop Your Pants Here runs until May of 2015. To check museum operating hours please call (204) 637-2354 or email.

Note: Lorraine’s mom had a crooked baby finger from a bone break never set. She entangled it in the pulley of her clothesline sometime in the mid-1950s.

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A spokesperson for the Office of the Chief Veterinarian said the case was handed over to Manitoba Justice last summer after a significant investigation, which included interviewing multiple witnesses.

“The case was discussed in detail with Manitoba Justice that completed a thorough review of the matter,” revealed an emailed statement. “While significant animal welfare issues where found, it was concluded that due to the nature of how those issues occurred there was not a reasonable likelihood of conviction.”

A reasonable likelihood of conviction is required to proceed with charges.

It was in September 2012 that officials responded to reports of animals in distress at the barn near Austin, which was in the midst of being depopulated by its operators — brothers Bernie and Menno Bergen. The brothers had been ordered to vacate the property, which is owned by HP Farm Equipment Ltd. At the time, a representative for the company said the Bergens were six years behind in their rent.

Provincial officials had offered the operators assistance in depopulating the barn, but the offer was declined.

When officials from the Chief Veterinary Office entered the barn they encountered a disturbing situation, requiring the euthanization of the 1,300 young hogs left without food after the sows were shipped in the preceding days.

Neither Bernie or Menno Bergen could be reached for comment.

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