In the midst of harvest season, Moose Jaw's own Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village and Museum welcomed farm families and city dwellers this past weekend.
The Museum hosted its annual threshing bee on Sept 11 and 12, which has been around since the inception of the Museum in 1969.
The annual event featured plowing, threshing, buzz saw, rope making, blacksmithing, and tractor pull demonstrations using only antique equipment.
Gord Ross, president of the Sukanen Ship Pioneer Village and Museum, shared that the threshing bee is the Museum's largest fundraiser and typically draws in around two thousand visitors throughout the weekend. This makes it the Museum's most visited weekend of the year, with many people walking through exhibits even while demonstrations are going on.
Audiences of all ages left thoroughly entertained, as the younger generation learned more about agriculture history, while older generation farmers got to reminisce about old-fashioned farming practices and equipment.
Throughout the weekend-long threshing bee, volunteers demonstrated just how labour-intensive farming once was.
"One of our demonstrations is of a stationary baler, where the straw is forked in by hand, and the bales are tied with wire. It takes two people just to tie the bales," shared Ross.
This year's edition also featured the grand opening of a new, highly anticipated exhibit at the Museum.
The Volman building, housing a farm family's collection of unique equipment and artifacts. Since homesteading in 1909, the Volmans have amassed an impressive collection.
Alfred Volman's collection was originally showcased at a museum in Leross, however, he was eager to put it on display at the popular Moose Jaw attraction once the Leross museum shut down.
For the first time, the Sukanen Museum also held its awards ceremony for long-term members at the threshing bee. The Museum currently has around ninety active members, with close to fourty volunteers running the threshing bee.
Since the Museum is entirely self-funded and run by volunteers, it depends on a solid turnout at its annual threshing bee, which was certainly the case this year.
