Dozens of antique tractors can be seen on the Braddock threshing grounds during the annual threshing bee and show, which includes daily parades. PHOTOS COURTESY SCTA
As communities across the nation prepared to celebrate America’s bicentennial in 1976, an idea surfaced in the small town of Braddock, about an hour’s drive southeast of Bismarck.
“It was at a parent-teachers meeting, and I said, ‘Well, why don’t we thresh?’ I said, ‘Nobody’s done that for years,’” recalls 91-year-old Del Svalen, who had moved to Braddock from Minnesota to teach and coach.
Two local farmers offered an Aultman-Taylor tractor and an early 1900s threshing machine. Neighbors helped get the machines in running order, and the first Braddock threshing event was held on Svalen’s property in the fall of 1975.
Since then, the Braddock threshing tradition has grown from a few implements drawing local interest to 13 buildings filled with antique tractors and other machines on a 23-acre site, which hosts roughly 1,500 to 2,000 people the weekend after Labor Day for the annual South Central Threshing Association’s Threshing Bee and Antique Show.
“The only thing we regret is not buying enough land,” Svalen says.
Beyond the excitement of its 50-year celebration, the show reunites a pair of implements first owned by the Svalen family in 1919. Thanks to the handiwork of brothers Dave and Kevin Duchsherer – and a Midwestern miracle – the 1919 Yellow Kid threshing machine and the 1919 Rumely tractor are back in the family again – and back in action in Braddock.
A FAMILY’S HISTORY
In 1919, Svalen’s father and uncle, Charles and Clarence Svalen, turned to the Montgomery Ward catalog and purchased a tractor and thresher made by the Avery Company to use on their McIntosh, Minn., farm. A few years later, the tractor was replaced by a Rumely tractor and used until 1945, when it was sold for scrap metal for $75.
Around 1975, Del retrieved the thresher, a 1919 Yellow Kid, from Minnesota and brought it to his farm in Braddock, where it made appearances in threshing shows before it, too, went the way of the Rumely.
“Back then, we didn’t have a big building to store these in,” Del says. “So, it just sat out in the elements and deteriorated.”
Until the Duchsherer brothers determined to rebuild it. They began working on the restoration of the threshing machine around 2013, Dave says, and the Yellow Kid threshed again – for the first time in decades – at last year’s bee in Braddock.
“I did get to pitch the first bundle into it,” Del says.
It was a proud moment for Dave.
“It was a big process. It was nothing easy to do,” Dave says. “We worked on that machine for a good 11 to 12 years.”
Most everything had to be rebuilt to see the Yellow Kid run again. All the wood except three boards, most of the metal, the straw walkers and the grain pans were all replaced, Dave says. Kevin found parts and iron on the internet, which the brothers retrieved from South Dakota. And it took four painting attempts to match the Yellow Kid’s harvest gold color.
But they did it.
“It was such a relief, to know that you put all this time and effort into that thing, and it worked,” Dave says. “When we finally had that machine all painted and had it belted, and we took it to Braddock, and how she ran that thing, it was quite a moment.”
A moment that brought tears to Del’s eyes.
“Seeing that Yellow Kid come back, it was No. 1. It was family,” Del says.
But what about that Rumely tractor?
AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT
Back in Minnesota, Del’s nephew, Gene Haugom, was visiting with a gentleman last summer at church. The man claimed his father, who had recently died, owned the 1919 Rumely tractor. The same one the Svalen family sold for scrap metal in 1945?
Years before, the man’s father, a pilot, was flying and spotted the Rumely. He immediately landed his plane and bought the tractor.
In 2024, Del went to Minnesota to see the tractor for himself. He bought it on the spot.
“He put the price down on it, and I said, ‘Sold!’” Del says. “My nephew damn near fell over.”
The $30,000 price tag was no question for Del, who got an important piece of his family history back.
“That was the big thing. It was the family tractor,” he says.
Turns out, that tractor never made it too far from home.
“Actually, it was only 5 miles from my home (farm in Minnesota),” Del says.
A BIG WEEKEND
The South Central Threshing Association’s 50th Threshing Bee and Antique Show, set for Sept. 6 and 7 in Braddock, is shaping up to be quite the party – with live threshing and demonstrations, daily parades, blacksmithing, children’s activities, good food, entertainment by N.D. State Troubadour Chuck Suchy, a rendition of “The Lawrence Welk Show” by Strasburg’s Joyful Voices and even two weddings! Two couples from Minnesota will be married on the threshing grounds during the show.
“We have no idea who they are,” Dave says.
“They came to the show one time, and they liked it,” Del says.
It’s a show for all ages. Seeing the old machines come to life again is a treat for the old-timers, yet seeing threshing in action is eye-opening for the younger generations, who only remember the combine.
“You just think, you know, when they would go out and they worked (with horses) and they would farm 20 acres a day, that was a big day. That was a big day of farming,” Dave says.
“I just think we’re preserving history,” Dave says. “Even my grandkids now, they’re getting to be in their 30s and stuff. You know, they never thought anything about that, but now it’s starting to interest them a little bit and stuff. Their mind starts thinking of how they ever, ever done this stuff.”
___
Cally Peterson is editor of North Dakota Living. She can be reached at cpeterson@ndarec.com.
PHOTO COURTESY SCTA
Braddock's 50th show
A few thousand people are expected to turn out to see dozens of antique tractors and machines Sept. 6 and 7 for the 50th anniversary of the South Central Threshing Association’s Threshing Bee and Antique Show.
Along with a traditional oats threshing demonstration and daily parades, see a corn shredder, sawmill, rock crusher, shingle maker, stationary engines, feedmill, miniature farm equipment, wood planer, silage cutter and hand-tie baler. Plus, the threshing grounds feature a pioneer village that has grown from one donated building to a small town with Miss Kitty’s saloon (which was converted from a schoolhouse), grain bin gazebos, chuckwagon, event center, truck pull track, pioneer house, schoolhouse, church, general store, railroad depot, ice house, blacksmith shop, post office and even a printing museum with operating presses.
“If you want to really see something, that print shop is unreal,” says Del Svalen, one of the show’s original founders.
Electrical hookups accommodate 100 campers or more, and special events, souvenirs and a keepsake anniversary booklet are being planned for the 50th anniversary celebration. Allan and Leah Burke, former owners and publishers of the Emmons County Record and the super volunteers behind the Braddock News Letterpress Museum on the threshing grounds, are helping create the commemorative booklet.
The threshing grounds are located at 5855 16th Ave. SE in Braddock. Find more information on the South Central Threshing Association’s Facebook page or call 701-391-4500.
To ‘thrash’ or ‘thresh?’
Is it “thrash” or “thresh?” Am I saying it wrong? Or are they? These questions were swimming in my brain as I interviewed Del Svalen and Dave Duchsherer for this story.
Upon further rumination, I surmised it could be a regional pronunciation. Likely a North Dakota or Midwest thing. Maybe a “Cherman-Russian ting” (translation: German-Russian thing). We’re talking about Braddock, after all, down in kuchen country.
Afraid to ask Del and Dave the presumably dumb question, I leaned on a few trusted sources. Unlike me, they all pronounced “thresh” like “thrash,” but none could be sure of the etymology of the word “threshing” as it relates to the machine that mechanized grain harvesting.
Upon further research, I learned “thrashing” is an earlier spelling of the term “threshing.”
Before the threshing machine, rather violent processes – hence “thrash” – were used to separate the wheat seed from the husk. Early methods included beating the grain by hand with a flail, hammering it with rocks through a sack or “treading” it with livestock, which trampled the grain with their hooves or dragged a sledge over the grain.
You say thrash. I say thresh. Both are correct. And we all raise a glass to the combine!
___
Source: “Why did we wait so long for the threshing machine?” by Jason Crawford, Roots of Progress blog, blog.rootsofprogress.org.
