[Photograph Album Depicting Threshing Bees in the Midwest]

Various places, 1964. Very good. 14¼" x 12¼". Embossed brown faux leather over boards, screwbound album. Pp. 44 with 349 photographs, all adhesive mounted. Photos of varying size with most around 2½" x 4¼" and nearly all are captioned on the page or on the photo. Very good: album lightly scuffed and a bit threadbare at corners; photos generally very good plus with a bit of scattered spotting.

This heavily captioned album depicts threshing bees and shows throughout the Midwestern United States and Canada.

Throughout much of the history of agriculture, threshing was laborious and time-consuming. Before the invention of the threshing machine in 1786, about a quarter of farming labor could be spent on it. A threshing bee was traditionally a time for neighbors to pool their labor to get the season's threshing done. Newspaper accounts we found online mention "old-fashioned" threshing bees as early as 1945. These bees typically involved people coming together to showcase (and buy and sell) equipment, share food, music and dancing, commemorate the past and hand out prizes. Though largely obsolete today, the tradition does live on, particularly in the Midwest.

This album is brimming with hundreds of photographs, names, notes and comments on at least 30 different bees or shows. Our compiler, who per one caption called Minnesota home, traveled to Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Manitoba and Ontario, Canada. The equipment is the star in nearly all the shots: we see various models and engines, including Stanley Steamers, horse-pulled threshers, "portables" and 110 horsepower tractors. Captions detail the machinery cutting corn, threshing sunflowers, sawing shingles, steaming tobacco, plowing and pumping. Two photos are aligned to make a great panorama showing a "Parade of Engines." Pages upon pages identify friends and cohorts at bees as well as posing with their equipment as our compiler visited sawmills and farmsteads en route.

Also of note are a few images showing women who appear to be preparing vehicles for display and/or conducting agricultural work. One is captioned, "Marilyn Trelstad with her 22 hp Advance." We found a great image online of Trelstad baling hay that identified her as the secretary of the Zumbro Valley (Minnesota) Threshermen's association.

Vivid, well-composed and well-captioned photographs detailing over 20 years of threshing bees.