Covenant News

Iowa Church to Host Old-Fashioned Threshing Bee

GRANITE, IA (May 29, 2003) - It will be a nostalgic step into the past as an old-fashioned threshing bee gets under way July 18-20 in Granite, co-sponsored by the Grandview Covenant Church of Larchwood and the Granite Threshermen's Association. Granite is located approximately 10 miles from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The 20-year-old annual event, which takes place about a mile north of the church, attracts all kinds of people interested in antique farming equipment and farming practices of the past, said pastor Hans-Erik Nelson. In addition to the old equipment, the event offers homemade ice cream from an antique ice cream maker, a variety of delicious foods and a number of demonstrations and events including an antique tractor show, antique tractor pull and a kiddie tractor pull (children on pedaled toy tractors). Antique tractors will feature the International/Farmall 06 series as well as a variety of antique Briggs engines.

One of the highlights of the three-day event will be a demonstration of early threshing methods using an antique belt-run threshing machine - visitors will be able to climb aboard and feed oats into the thresher. There will be a pancake breakfast on the Sunday during the event, hosted by Grandview Covenant, with outdoor services to be conducted on the threshing bee grounds with Nelson preaching.

"The event is not a spiritual event per se, but part of the program is the outdoor evangelistic church service on the morning of July 20, which Grandview Covenant will be hosting," Nelson said. "This event is similar to many other folk events around the Midwest that celebrate a particular agricultural heritage - an outdoor tent-like church meeting is part of that heritage and of the times that this event is commemorating."

The event runs from the evening of July 18 through the evening of July 20. The chair of the Granite Threshing Bee Association is a member and former treasurer of the church, Darrel Hansen. For more information on the event, call Hansen at 721-477-2598.

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