Threshing season!

My father wasn't exactly the most progressive farmer in the district.  He did however own three tractors.  An oldish one, a very oldish one and a new one.  Our threshing machine as far as I can remember was ancient, and made mostly out of wood. The new tractor would be "harnessed" to the elderly threshing machine, in order to drive the conveyor belt, laden with mealies upwards and into the "belly" of the beast.  That was where all the magic took place.  With much jerking and jolting and clattering and clanging, the mealie pips would come pouring out into hessian bags hanging on the right hand side of the machine.  The cobs would be spewed out on the left and the leaves, otherwise known as "blare" would be shot high into the air out of the front, landing like giant snowflakes onto an ever increasing heap.  

When the heap was large enough, my sisters and I would burrow into the centre, hollowing out a large cave, and fortifying it with a high semi-circular wall.  My big sister who always had lots of ideas, suggested that we pull nylon stockings over our heads, in order to prevent all the dust and dirt from being breathed into our lungs.  Well, apart from looking like three midgets hell bent on robbing a bank, the stockings made no difference whatsoever in protecting our lungs.  

The bags of mealies would be stacked upright in rows, and each bag sewn together at the top by using a large needle with a curved and flattened end.  I loved sewing up the bags and running up and down on top of them to make sure I had countered them correctly.  One of the things I loved to do best of all, was to plunge my hands into the mealies, sometimes even up to my elbows, then slowing pull them out again, allowing the pips to trickle through my fingers.  I would do this again, and again, and again, mesmerized by the sameness of the action.  The gentle clicking noise together with the coolness of the mealies in the hot African sun was balm to my spirit.

All this ended very abruptly when boarding school 
intervened.  I soon discovered that the holidays seldom
coincided with the threshing season.  Still, memories are very powerful and very precious, and many of them can be wrapped up and carefully stored in ones heart, to be brought out from time to time and examined like a rare and beautiful jewel.