Heppner gazette-times., August 17, 1978, SECTION B, Page TWELVE, Image 32

B-TWELVE The Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon, Thursday, August 17, 1978
Links to county's farm-life past preserved
by Shorty Peck in new Fair museum
Harold "Shorty" Peck is at
it again this year only on a
bigger scale than ever before.
In addition to his now-traditional
Collectors' Corner exhi
bit at the Morrow County Fair,
the Upper Rhea Creek
rancher will be featuring a
full-fledged antique farm
equipment museum, plus a
booth displaying old-time
horse tack and accessories.
For the past several weeks,
Peck has spent his scarce free
hours converting an old horse
barn at the fairgrounds into a
museum, in which he will
display items ranging from a
horse-drawn corn planter to
an 1876 vintage buggy, com
plete with kerosene headlamps.
Jim Lamer, left, helps Harold "Shorty" Peck unload
"footburning" plow outside Peck's new Fair museum,
The museum will include a wide assortment of
old-time farm implements of the area, plus a
restored pioneer kitchen.
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Peck, a lifelong resident of
the area, grew up working
with many of the implements
he now collects and restores.
He owns a horsedrawn, single
bottom "foot burner" plow,
similar to one he recalls his
father used. "It took him 42
days to plow up 40 acres with
that thing," he recollected.
"And when the crop came up,
the grasshoppers ate it." Why
do they call the plow a
"footburner"? "Just spend a
day running one, and you'll
find out," Peck replied.
Peck's father bought the
first combine in Morrow
County in 1906, a huge
machine that required 32
horses to pull. During those
early years of wheat produc
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tion in Morrow County when
Peck started work on a
threshing crew at age 11, it
took a lot of extra manpower
to get the job done.
Threshing crews generally
required about 14 workers,
"It took 42 days to plow 40 acres, and
uhen the crop came up the
grasshoppers ate it."
whose jobs were given titles
like hoedown, roustabouts,
and sack sewers. Each crew
also included a cook, and an
average of 21 horses.
Peck hopes to revitalize
temporarily at least one of
the old threshing-era skills,
that of sack sewing. During
this year's fair he hopes to
give demonstrations of the
now antiquated art. Sack
sewers customarily received
the second-highest wages on
threshing crews, ranking just
f
below the separator operator
on the crew's pecking order.
Grain had to be crammed into
140 pound sacks to be hauled to
storage areas, prior to the
advent of grain elevators in
the area, just before the
outbreak of World War II.
Back in those days, "if I
could sew 500 sacks a day, I
thought I was doing pretty
good," Peck recalled.
Until he quit raising wheat
two years ago, Peck harvested
his grain on an older model
self-propelled combine. "It
didn't have the air conditioned
cab and the radio that a lot of
them have now," he noted. "In
fact it didn't have any cab at
all, and sometimes, no sun
shade." Peck wore goggles to
see through the flying chaff
while harvesting, especially
"when a good tail wind came
up."
Peck insists that he doesn't
have anything against the new
lines of farm equipment,
"except for the price. ..you can
pay as much for a new tractor
as you did for your whole
place." By collecting and
restoring the earlier farming
tools of the area, he hopes to
preserve a link to the county's
past.
Other duties at this year's
Fair and Rodeo will include
Peck's serving as chauffeur
for King and Queen Adrian
and Velva Bechdolt during the
annual parade, using his
restored 1906 International
auto. The Bechdolts are not
strangers to Peck Adrian
was his geometry and typing
teacher at Lexington.
Peck hopes to build a
permanent museum in which
to preserve the implements he
has spent so much of his life
making a living with, and
later restoring.
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