Happy and prosperous news to all our wishes for 1906. A good thing many of us don't know what's in store for us or many of us would be found cowards and run which a good many did run. Well on the 2nd of January the threshing was not done around me. They were all small crops from 5 to 20 acres. Doukhobors were threshing with Rollers made from big round logs with strips nailed a few inches apart. This was drawn with oxen over the wheat spread on the ground, oxen going round and round in a circle, the women with their forks shaking up the straw as they did so, some Russians using flails.
There was one old time threshing machine near me, it was driven by animal power called a sweep power so I was asked to help to thresh, bring your oxen. Well me and my eldest boy went just 3 miles away from home. Well of all the sights I ever saw it was here. Horses, oxen hitched together going round in a circle, a man in the center with a long whip hollering, shouting using language I would not put down here, till he just looked like a crazy man, all to keep the oxen up to speed or they would not thresh. The oxen would get tired and out would come their tongues, then they would unhitch put on fresh teams of oxen and there they would go it all day. I certainly felt sorry for the poor things.
They gave me and my boy, a dollar a day. We finished threshing that week. Wheat was then 45 cents a bushel for No. one hard, 40 cents for No. 2
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