Volunteers bind wheat for annual threshing bee

Last Tuesday some tourists crossing Jewell County got to see a scene from the past as 13 workers came together on Fred Eilert's wheat field just west of Mankato. The group ranged in age from 14-year-old Noah Shipman to 84-year-old Harlow Vader. Their mission was to bind wheat for the upcoming Jewell County Historical Society's Threshing Bee. The t-shirts and tank tops were not authentic to the past but the machinery was true to a time decades ago.

There was an old International binder, the likes of which could have come out the horse and mule era. In fact, Harlow Vader remembers his dad using...