Jul. 28—Old-time wheat threshing with side dishes of broom making, blacksmithing, basket weaving and other “hands on” historical skills were all on the menu at the Bos Bros Fall Harvest, an old-fashioned threshing bee.
Antique farm equipment in a rainbow of colors from original rust to shiny yellow and green filled the show grounds on the Bos Brothers Historical Farm, located on Springhill Road south of Erie.
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A volunteer uses a pitchfork to toss a sheaf of wheat into a threshing machine at the Bos Brothers Historical Farm on Saturday, July 26, 2025. This year’s event focused on harvesting wheat.
The show — celebrating its 10th anniversary — is designed to showcase “field-to-table” practices while giving antique farm machinery enthusiasts a chance to show off their machines and provide visitors a glimpse of how farmers harvested wheat before automated, air-conditioned combines with global positioning navigation arrived.
Walking behind a John Deere hand plow was one of those skills that Bennett Sierens, 15, of Annawan experienced Friday.
“At first it was hard to figure out,” said Bennett, who attended the show with his 85-year-old grandfather, Francis. “But then it became easier.”
Bennett grabbed the wooden handles of the steel plow, guiding it through the sod as it was pulled by an antique John Deere tractor, rather than a horse.
Francis smiled and nodded as Bennett steadied and straightened the plow as it churned up the moist soil in neat, dark brown rows.
“My first tractor was a John Deere, GP, general purpose,” Francis said. “So I did not have to use a hand plow like that.”
Bennett and his family raise pigs and cattle on their grain farm in Annawan. Asked if he thought he’d be able to use the hand plow as part of his modern day chores, he smiled and said: “No, not how I am right now, but maybe if I worked out on it more.”
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Bennett Sierens, 15, of Annawan, uses a John Deere hand plow at the Bos Brothers Historical Farm south of Erie on Friday, July 25, 2025. (Earleen Hinton)
That transference of vintage farming skills to today’s generation is one of the goals of the show, said Katie Smith, the daughter of Chuck Bos, who with his brother Kevin started the harvest shows in 2016.
The family plans, schedules and organizes each show as a “labor of love.”
“It’s a lot of work, but we really love it,” Smith said as she buzzed between activities and demonstrations Friday. “It is nice to see the people outside, seeing new things and seeing where their food comes from.”
The Bos farm family alternates its harvest show with its threshing show on odd and even years. Last year’s show concentrated on corn.
There is no admission fee. The show runs off donations and sponsorships.
To help cover the costs of the show, visitors deposit donations in milk cans located on the show’s grounds or stop by the registration barn.
This year’s show focused on harvesting wheat and processing it into homemade wheat bread, cooked on the show grounds in the antique “Cook Shack,” a portable kitchen wagon used to bring meals to threshing teams in the fields.
Visitors also could watch demonstrations showcasing how agricultural-related skills were done before automation.
The Buckwalter brothers, Lincoln, Everett and Baylor from Geneseo, ages 9, 9 and 5, watched Carvel Morgan of Davenport, Iowa, make them a broom by hand, weaving different sizes, shapes and colors on his antique, not mechanized, machinery.
Everett said he planned to use the broom to clean up at home. Lincoln said he may use it to shoo the cat.
Meanwhile, in the adjacent wheat fields, two antique John Deere combines were busy harvesting and depositing their wheat berries into a wagon.
Modern harvesting involves the use of a combine harvester that reaps, threshes and winnows — separates the chaff from the grain — all in one machine.
In another field, wheat sheaves were loaded into a wagon and taken to one of the threshing machines where they were threshed (thrashed) to loosen the edible part of wheat from the straw.
Some of those wheat berries were then transported directly to Charles Pulley, another volunteer, who used a 1949 mill powered by a 1919 Fairbanks Morse engine to grind the berries into flour.
That flour was taken to the “Cook Shack” where Sabrina Smith, 14, of Clinton, Iowa, served up samples of freshly baked wheat bread for visitors to try.
“I think we’ve done about 28 loaves so far,” Sabrina said late Friday. “The bread is very popular, especially the cinnamon raisin.”
A working, portable sawmill powered by Charles Hubbard’s 1916 Case steam tractor — a 20,000-pound tractor once used by Hubbard’s grandfather — was one of the working demonstrations.
Visitors watched as large tree trunks were placed onto the sawmill and a 5/16th-inch blade cut it into planks.
Groups of homeschooled children jumped onto a tractor-drawn wagon Friday and ventured out onto the fields to see all the action.
As one of the combines harvested the wheat, volunteer Roger Mixer of East Moline picked up a stalk of wheat and rubbed it between the palms of his hands to show how the wheat is gleaned and how it makes it to the dinner table.
For more information, visit bosbrothershistoricalfarm.com.
History of the name
Bos Brothers is how the Boses were known throughout the area. Clarence Bos had four boys — Robert, Bill, Charles and Peter. (Charles is Chuck and Kevin’s dad.) They all farmed together in the 1950s and 1960s in the Erie/Geneseo area.