14

Loading tobacco
1927
Pelee Island, Ontario

Credits:
Essex Kent Mennonite Historical Association

15

Bernhard Fast, Bernhard Konrad, and Abram B. Konrad loading tobacco
1934
Pelee Island, Ontario

Credits:
Essex Kent Mennonite Historical Association

16

Jacob Epp on John Deer tractor hauling a load of tobacco to the barn
1938
Pelee Island, Ontario

Credits:
Essex Kent Mennonite Historical Association

17

Late in the year the tobacco sticks were taken down, the plants pulled off, and taken into the strip room. Here the leaves were sorted, graded and baled.

18

Abram B. Konrad with a load of tobacco at the large tobacco barn on Parsons Road
1934
Pelee Island, Ontario

Credits:
Essex Kent Mennonite Historical Association

19

The bales were loaded onto wagons and taken to the boat.

20

Farmers lining up at Scudder's North Dock at harvest time. Grain freighter loading at elevator
1949
Pelee Island, Ontario

Credits:
Essex Kent Mennonite Historical Association

21

Once they arrived on the mainland, the wagons were taken to the tobacco factory. Twenty-five cents per pound was considered a good price. Growing tobacco helped the Mennonites to pay off their travel debt.

22

By the mid-1930s, many Mennonite farmers had switched to growing soy beans, corn and wheat crops. Late in fall the grain boats would come for the soy beans which had been bagged and stored in barns or in the dock's building.

Wheat crops needed to be sown in the fall and harvested the next summer. When the wheat was ripe, a machine pulled by horses cut the stalks and bound it into sheaves which were dropped to the ground. These sheaves needed to be picked up and arranged into small bunches to allow the wheat to finish ripening. When threshing time came, the farmers worked together. The threshing machine was run by a large steam engine. There was a big belt connecting the threshing machine to the steam engine to make it operate. Generally, about five wagons were used to haul the sheaves of wheat from the field to the threshing machine. The farmers would drive to the field and several men put the sheaves on the wagon, and the drivers would stack them until the wagon was full. Then they would drive to the threshing machine and unload the wheat into the machine which would separate the wheat kernels from the straw. The wheat was put into bags and the straw was blown into a pile. The bagged wheat was often stored in the shed on the dock. Some of the straw would be used to separate the ice-blocks in the Island's ice-houses during the summer months.