This is likely to be the grain harvest & it looks like wheat.

The wheat was cut with a binder when nearly ripe, left in the field to ripen in stooks and then carted to be stacked. During the winter the contents of stacks were threshed, the straw being separated from the grain. Once again the straw being stacked or later in the 20's baled by a wire baler, the straw used for bedding farm animals, mainly in the Nuthampstead area, cattle.

The threshing was done often by contractors who brough the kit, Threshing drum, a steam (traction) engine used to power and transport, though in this picture the power comes from a tractor with a belt pulley. For steam, there had to be a nearby water supply from which water was transported to the site by a horse drawn tank. An elevator had to be employed, shown here to make the stack. The system was labour intensive, but a great improvement on  harvesting being done entirely by hand and the threshing being done by hand using a flail in a draughty barn throughout the winter. the joint in a flail was generally made from eelskin.

In the early to middle 19th century, wheat would have been taken to a mill, as in the Chishill one to be turned into flour for bread making. In the real 'good' old days' a certain amount of chalk would have been added by less scrupulous millers along with mouldy flour to keep the whiteness!

With special thanks to Wilfrid Dimsdale.

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