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  Welcome to The Threshing Stone website

This site is devoted to the research and understanding of Threshing Stones 

The Threshing Stone was a tool used for the threshing of grain. It has a long history of use from around the world. The stone is used to separate the grain from the straw and chaff. The threshing stone is a heavy cylindrical stone typically with ridges that is pulled by draft animals over a circular pile of dry harvested grain stalks. The rolling stone knocks the grain loose from the head, and then, a person with a fork lofts the straw into the air allowing the wind to blow the straw and chaff away, leaving mostly the grain to fall to the ground, this is called winnowing. The grain is then gathered and stored for future use.

  A threshing stone on display in North Newton Kansas

A  STONE. . .TOOL. . . PEOPLE. . . SYMBOL

Why research the Threshing Stone?

The threshing stone is an interesting artifact at many levels, and I intend to explore all facets of the threshing stone. This web-site will hopefully give me an avenue for collecting additional information and to add to the collective knowledge of this basic farming tool that has meaning far beyond it's functional use.

The threshing stone represents a unique blend of attributes. As an agricultural artifact it has a place in the long history of grain production visible throughout the world. I am intrigued with it just as a “Stone” that was carved from native bedrock and shaped into a piece of functional artistry by the hands of skilled stone cutters, creating the tool that is today only a visual reminder of our past heritage. I am intrigued with it as a “Tool” that has its place in agricultural history that started with manual labor using only hooves and flails for threshing, then to the use of the threshing stone to reduce labor and then becoming obsolete with the invention of the mechanical threshing machine. I am intrigued with it as it traces the history of a “People”, in particular the story of the Mennonite farmers as they migrated with their families and farming skills from country to country for religious freedom, ultimately bringing the hard red winter wheat to the plains of Kansas. I am also intrigued with the threshing stone as a “Symbol”, adopted by Bethel College, a Mennonite college in central Kansas, where it became the symbol of strength and endurance, rooted in the hard working farm families of the plains.

Please explore this web site; read, look and learn, and help me add to the knowledge of threshing stones.
Glen Ediger 
 
I would like your help in collecting information to compile a list of
known threshing stones in the United States and around the world.
 
If you know where one is located, have a story or information,
please contact me, glen@threshingstone.com
 
It is not known how many threshing stones were made in Kansas
(they were not brought over from Russia), some writings have the
number as low as 28 and as high as 200, but we don't know for sure.
 
These stones were only used for a few years before becoming
obsolete, and many were never even used. It is part of my goal to
see how many we can ultimately find.
 
I will not publish specific locations of privately owned stones.
I am not looking to buy stones, or broker stones, I am only trying to
compile a historical log, with the possibly of ultimately publishing a
book about threshing stones.


Illustration of the threshing stone in use in 1855:
#26, Petzholdt 1855. (Alexander Petzholdt, Reise im westlichen und südlichen europäischen Russland im Jahre 1855 (Leipzig: Herman Fries, 1864), 157