Horseengine …

 

During our big spring festival we commence the presentation of a somewhat unusual experience – one not possible to see anywhere else in Denmark. We have initiate a horse-powered thresher in the Red Barn on Saturday May 20. 2006. And what, pray tell, is a horse-powered thresher? A horse-powered thresher is a kind of historical power plant, where the horses walk around in a circle outdoors next to a barn and turn an axis. The axis, which is chained to another axis, gear and straps, uses the horses’ energy to drive threshers, grinders etc. inside the barn in question.

Historically speaking the development has gone from the man with the flail over horse-powered thresher to tractor driven threshing machines to conclude at the enormous combine harvesters of our day.

Here at Nyvang the story goes like this:
The year after our Smallholding was established, the people from Maskingruppen Sjællands Veterantraktorklub in Herfølge came and threshed for the harvest in 1993.

Sjællands Veterantraktorklubs Maskingruppe wanted to be at Nyvang more than two weekends each year, and when they in 2001 obtained an old threshing machine, which had not been operational in 40 years, they proceeded to restore it in our stack barn to the great pleasure of the audience. For instance, an old granny in a visiting party wept with joy when she saw the threshing machine. She had never dreamt to see such a machine run once more in her lifetime.
The threshing machine, which runs at the Smallholding, is from Hans at Fårevejlegården and has run there from 1945 to 1965. There are 30 inches of it and it was built at N.R. Pedersen in Holbæk as a royal Danish patent.

By then the six men of the machine group had whetted their appetite and when Nyvang had a horse-powered thresher stored they began a bigger process in 2002. The foundation was laid out and a seven metres long axis was dug into the ground and into the barn, where it drives a small ten inches thresher from the factory Godthåb in Ringsted.

At the initiation on Saturday you will as a result be able to see the horse-powered thresher and threshing machine run for the first – but not the last – time here at Nyvang.

As a funny subplot you must note that the horses walk in the horse-powered thresher in the same fashion as when they are tied to the horse carriage. The nearer walks inwards and the farther walks outwards and they walk against the clock so it feels for them like they were tied to the carriage or the plough.