Threshing Around

Job thread

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This shining population center is considered the jewel of The Sylira Region. Home of the vast majority of Mizahar's population, Syliras is nestled in a quiet, sprawling valley on the shores of the Suvan Sea. [Lore]

Threshing Around

Postby Dove Brown on December 11th, 2015, 4:15 pm

8 Winter 515

Dove lifted the threshing flail and brought it down again on the unbound sheaf in front of her. The flail had a long wooden shaft that she held, and a shorter wooden shaft joined to the first shaft by a short chain. The shorter shaft clunked down on the sheaf and bounced sideways. She swung it again, feeling the momentum of the shorter shaft flex on the end of its chain and pull the longer handle along behind it. She swung and thwacked it down and this time her aim was better. Some of the dry grains fell out of the ear onto the threshing floor. Pleased by her success, she thwacked it again and again until all the grain had been knocked out of the sheaf onto the floor and her arms ached gently. Once that was the case, she set the flail aside for a moment, picked up the straw left behind and shook it. The last few loose grains bounced down onto the floor, and she tossed the straw over onto the pile of straw building up along the side of the barn. She fetched another sheaf, cut the binding, and dropped the loose stems on top of the existing grain. She shook out her arms, picked up the flail again and swung it up, round and down onto the unbound sheaf, taking on the threshing task again. The flail thudded and thwacked, the grain bounced, the straw rustled, and she found a rhythm in the steady repetition of movement. It reminded her a little of practicing with her sling, but a flail required a different hold, and - her sore hands reminded her - created a different pattern of callouses.

All too soon, the sheaf gave up the last of its grain and she had to change tasks again. She shook out the straw and tossed it onto the pile, then fetched the broom and swept both the grain and the dusty chaff over to the opposite side, where the winnowers were working in the draft from the big barn doors. Some of the chaff floated up into the air as she swept, and her nose itched to sneeze. She rubbed it, hoping to prevent that, but to no avail. She sneezed once, then twice, in the dusty air. She dug a rag out of her pocket, blew her nose, and then shoved the rag back out of sight and went to fetch another sheaf. She cut the binding, dropped the stems in her work area and went to trade the broom for the flail again. She propped up the broom, but as she reached for the flail, she must have nudged the broom handle, because it tilted sideways and fell. She let go of the flail and grabbed for the broom before it thumped down across her foot. Her fingers raced against gravity and closed around the broom handle before it quite landed - only for her to hear a loud thud as the flail decided to also fall, in the opposite direction. Dove's only consolation was that the flail hadn't landed on her feet.
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Dove Brown
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Threshing Around

Postby Dove Brown on March 28th, 2016, 3:33 pm

She set the broom in place more carefully this time, and bent to pick up the flail. It came smoothly into her hands and she took a deep breath for courage and turned round to her workspot. She wasn't the only one threshing and certainly not the only person in the barn, but all the others seemed to be absorbed in their work. At any rate, none of them looked at her and she was able to get back to thwacking sheaves as if the flail had never fallen over. In a way that was reassuring. No one was going to laugh at her, and nobody was watching her embarass herself. More thud and thumps echoed through the barn as others threshed their piles. It was too noisy to speak easily if not to think. Dove could always think and watch, if only to reassure herself that she was getting her tasks right. Now she watched in snatched glances but saw only what she was already doing. This was a simple enough task as long as you hit the right place. She managed it about two thirds of the time but it didn't seem to be slowing her down past the general speed. She swung and hit, feeling the blow jar up through her hands, lifted and swung and hit, never really getting much of a rhythm before she had to stop, clear away straw and grain, replace the sheaf and try again.

She supposed there was a reason why she was only supposed to do one sheaf at a time, but no one had gotten around to telling her what it was. At least the frequent changes gave her aching arms and back a brief rest every few minutes. Despite that, the ache continue to build no matter how she tried to ease it. The flail was heavy enough and different enough that the muscles she earned through other kinds of work didn't quite cover this kind. She sighed and shook out her arms, and then reached for the flail again. The ache was beginnning to hurt and there was still so much to do, so many sheaves stacked in and around the barn, despite threshing having gone on over the end of Fall and now into Winter. Perhaps the pile had shrunk from its original size, but it didn't seem to have shrunk today, which is what mattered. Dove gritted her teeth over the ache and redoubled her efforts. The problem with trying to increase speed was a corresponding loss of accuracy, so she had to swing the flail more times in order to knock the grain out. She straightened, arching her back against the threshing stoop, and exchanged the flail for the broom once more. Grasping the broom made her wince and she stopped to look at her palm. She found she had a blister there, as if she was some soft-handed desk worker and not a toughened field labourer.
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Threshing Around

Postby Dove Brown on March 28th, 2016, 3:57 pm

One of the older farmers, also changing sheafs, grabbed her wrist and turned her hand so he could see it. Dove flinched but he took no notice. "Not good," he said tersely. "Don't want that breaking open and dripping on the grain. You got something to pad it with?" When Dove dropped her gaze and fished out the rag, he took it from her and wound it deftly over the blister to protect it before knotting it down. "Right. Now trade over to the winnowing for a bit. That won't chafe in the same place. Go on." And he gave her an almost friendly shove towards the winnowing.

Dove hesitated, then went where instructed. She'd just been getting the hang of threshing though, and now she had to do something else, something she was less familiar with. Another older farmer looked up as she reached the group and the cold breeze flowing through the barn tugged at her shirt and flapped the end of the knot in the rag. Under her clothes, Dove felt goosepimples forming and catching on the cloth. She tried not to shiver or quail under the farmer's.

"Aye, it's cold here," the farmer said, "but we need the breeze for this, so needs must." She held a wide shallow basket out to Dove. "Scoop some of the mixed grain and chaff into this, just a thin layer." Dove took the basket and obediently scooped from the pile she'd only just finished creating, then turned for the next instruction. The farmer nodded. "Right, then you come out into the middle of the breeze, shake the grain and toss it a little, so the breeze can get all round it, see? The chaff's so light it gets blown away, and the grain's heavy enough not to be. When chaff stops blowing off, tip the grain into one of the sacks there. Got it?"

Dove just nodded and the farmer left her to it, and grabbed another basket for herself. Dove stood where she'd been told and tossed cautiously. The edge of the basket went very close to the covered blister and she winced and adjusted her grip until it was easier to toss without getting an unexpeced jab of pain that might make her jolt the basket the wrong way. The chaff swirled up in the air as the breeze caught it and then drifted down to pile against the high threshold under the door. Dove glanced that way as the amount of chaff flowing out of her basket slowed to a trickle and saw a child busily shovelling the piled chaff into sacks. Nothing would go to waste from this harvest. Straw for mattresses and animal bedding, grain to feed people and stock, chaff for better quality mattresses and roughage in the animal feed. Which was fine and good by Dove's reckoning. Wastage now might mean hunger later in the year, and she'd had quite enough hungry times, thank you very much!
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Dove Brown
Keeping my head, my backbone, and my heart
 
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Threshing Around

Postby Dove Brown on March 28th, 2016, 7:45 pm

She tilted the basket, sliding the grain from one side to the other as the chaff wisped off it, and finally emptied the clean grain into a sack. The basket, while it was good for winnowing, turned out to be a pain to pour from. The grain kept wanting to slide over the edges onto the floor instead of into the sack. Eventually, Dove figured out a way to hold it with her hands at the sides, channeling the grain down over the edge that rested in the sack. The grain slithered past - there was no other word for that smooth cold slide - and she tipped up the basket to get the final bit out. Once it was in the sack, she went back to the unsorted pile and got herself another layer to toss and winnow. The breeze was picking up a bit, gusting here and there, with each swirl made visible by the chaff and dust it carried. Dove felt it coil around her ankles, cold air creeping through the weave of the woolen pants that she wore, and seeping down from there inside her ankle boots to chill her feet. The cold didn't have nearly so many problems chilling her fingers and leaving them stiffened from cold, but Dove just gritted her teeth and bore with it. She could see that the winnowers needed the breeze to blow the chaff clear and guessed that that was why they tried to get it all done in the last warmth of Fall. This year it had run on a bit, since the harvest had been good and that meant more to be threshed before it could be winnowed.

As the wind got up, some of the chaff sifted into Dove's clothes and under the rag bandaging the blister on her palm. It itched just as much here in the threshing barn as it had when it had done exactly the same thing during the harvest. Unlike the harvest, there was less here to help keep her mind off it. She rolled her shoulders and set the basket down for a minute as she tried to shake the chaff to a more comfortable position. She really didn't like that it was potentially getting into her blister - or that it certainly would if she managed to take the top off the blister. Chaff under the rag was likely to chafe the already sore skin and she would prefer it if the blister healed safely. She examined how the rag had been wound around her hand and knotted, tracing the edges with her eyes, so that she could replace the rag if it came off - or after she took it off to wash.

Then, with a sigh, she picked up the basket and tossed the grain lightly, doing her best to catch it all as it came down. She got almost all of it, but a few grains missed the edge and landed on the floor. She froze momentarily, unsure what to do, and the older farmer glanced over at her. Dove hastily got moving again and shook the basket, focusing on the chaff floating up into the air and carried away on the strengthening breeze.
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Dove Brown
Keeping my head, my backbone, and my heart
 
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Threshing Around

Postby Dove Brown on March 28th, 2016, 11:45 pm

The older farmer leaned over. "Any that spills, just sweep it back into the pile. Broom is over there - that is if your hand's up to it?"

Dove dropped her gaze to the grain in her basket, shifting it about and watching the chaff float off like candle smoke. "I'll be fine," she said softly. "I can do it, truly." She could cope, just as she always had. She didn't have anyone else to look after her, hadn't for years, which meant she had to take care of things herself. Which in turn often meant working with and around aches and pains and small hurts like that. The look the farmer gave her suggested that she hadn't been convincing in the slightest, and her cheeks darkened under those disbelieving eyes. "I- I'll stop if it hurts too much." But she thought to herself that too much would only be if she couldn't hold the broom for pain, and at that point she'd have more problems than just a bit of spilled grain.

"See that you do," the farmer said dryly, and went to fetch more grain.

Dove nodded, watched the last of the chaff drift free of her grain and went to tip it into a sack. It slithered over her hands and almost filled the sack. The last of it went in safely, though, and she fetched the broom to sweep the spill up before it got crushed. Her flail muscles had eased with the change to winnowing, but she could feel a new set beginning to ache, and the broom also gave those muscles a break. So she swept with long even strokes, diging the bristles of the broom into the floor to make sure she got every last grain back in the pile. The handle dug into her hand more than she usually noticed, because of the blister, but the padding seemed to do its job of protecting it. Finally, Dove set the broom aside, fetched her basket and added a new layer of grain. This time, she was determined not to spill any, and her mouth and jaw tightened with concentration as she focused on that and only that.

She didn't toss the grain as high this time, only enough for the breeze to get under it as well as over, and pull away the chaff that the grain had been lying on. That meant that most of the grain didn't go above the basket sides and fell straight back into it. The bit that did go higher was above the centre of the basket, and she'd tossed it straight enough up, that she really didn't need to move the basket much to catch it again. The wind whipped it away and this time she didn't watch it go. Her hands were cold enough that she needed to make sure they didn't cramp on the basket, so she watched those instead. Her sigh of relief was quiet enough as she stepped out of the immediate draft for a moment to slide the winnowed grain into a new sack, that the sound of flails and wind hid it.
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Dove Brown
Keeping my head, my backbone, and my heart
 
Posts: 508
Words: 181194
Joined roleplay: July 30th, 2015, 9:36 pm
Location: Mithryn (Syliras)
Race: Human
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Medals: 4
Featured Character (1) Mizahar Mentor (1)
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)

Threshing Around

Postby Emergence on August 19th, 2016, 10:37 pm

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Dove Brown


Skills
Skill Points
Agriculture 4
Endurance 1


Lores:
  • Don't Bleed on the Grain
  • Agriculture: Shaking Grain
  • Grain Chaff Itches

Injuries:
  • Sore Palm: Lasts 3 days if washed and covered. 6 days if untreated and soreness gets worse until day 4.

Comments:
Very short and sweet job thread! Very good jargen use, I am impressed with your research/knowledge!
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Emergence
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