Some years after you had seen the first horsepower and its circling horses you began to hear about portable "steam ingines" that were to be used to furnish the power to run the separator. You had never thought of a steam engine as being on any of the valley farms. Steam engines belonged to the town, not the country, and were apt to burst, or the fire would cause a conflagration. Everybody protested, but some one bought one, and the entire valley turned out to see it work. It was so successful that horsepowers were relegated to a dead past with greater suddenness even than had been the flail and in a couple of seasons every one was used to seeing the smoke and hearing the steady puff of the steam thrasher.

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The families we exchanged with, there were no hard and fast "territory," except next door "butchering neighbors" who people all down through the years threshed to-gether, and perhaps on the outer fringe of that. From there on out the territory would overlap other rings and would be jagged from year to year. These outer boundries was a good way to get acquainted with people who lived in the community, but you never really run on to.

Threshing was a very important work-social event, more than most of us realized at the time. 'Course there were some negative aspects about it, 'cause when you threshed you opened your place up for God and everybody to see. Sometimes there'd be, golly did you ever see such a mess? But that didn't go on too much, by and large it was good for neighbors to get to-gether, exchange bits of useful information, visit, and sure some gossip, see the innerworkings of other farmers livestock enterprise, crops, be in their home, get to know their family. Looking back from this point in my life it was a sad day when the old threshing rings gave way to modern harvest. I would say it was the first wedge to separate farmers as groups into individuals, and every one of us has suffered the more from the loss of it.