GIRVIN—Thanks to Harold and Marilyn Riecken’s threshing bee, Francis Cool was able to check another item off his bucket list.

Last Sunday, Oct. 21, Cool finally got a chance to operate a binder.

With Harold’s son Chris at the wheel of the tractor, pulling the binder, Cool took a pass in the field of oats, sitting on the binder’s small metal seat between the reel and side discharge, every so often maneuvering the binder’s pedals to kick a few bundles of oats to the ground.

“I loved it,” Cool said afterwards. “It was a rough ride,” adding he had appreciation of folks who rode the binder when they were pulled by horses.

Harold says the binder isn’t difficult to operate, it just needs to be tripped once four or five bundles are on the carrier so the bundles slide off to the ground.

Operating the binder when a team of four or five horses pulled it, Harold says, is a different scenario. He wonders how farmers back in the day were able to manage that.

Operating a binder, stooking bundles, pitching bundles, and loading a rack were some of the old-time harvest chores people had a chance to try at the Riecken’s farm west of Girvin last Sunday.

They held a threshing bee giving people a chance to relive harvests of old or to try something new.

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Just in time for Halloween! In the spirit of dressing up, we found these cool cats and these snazzy kids. If anyone recognizes any of these costumed characters in the pictures, we’d love to hear from you. Please call The Davidson Leader at 306-567-2047 or email davidsonleader@sasktel.net.

Pila and Racka Bones and their trusty canine companion T-bone, last Wednesday, donned their bathing suits to celebrate last week’s warmer temperatures. The Bones family has become the talk of Herman Crescent since Oct. 6 when they arrived in the front yard of Tamara and Tony Allen’s home as part of their annual Halloween display.

DAVIDSON—Last Tuesday Davidson town council passed a bylaw prohibiting the burning of garbage in town.

Bylaw 784 regulates the burning of refuse within town limits.

It prohibits people and businesses from burning trash, refuse, garbage, industrial waste, paper products, wood, yard waste or any other type of waste in an open fire or incinerator in a manner that causes air pollution.

The bylaw contains a few exclusions that will still allow certain types of fires. Campfires or fires in outdoor fire pits are excluded from the bylaw as are cook fires fueled by charcoal or processed coal. Fires for the purpose of prevention or control of fires or for firefighting training purposes, provided they are authorized by the municipality, are also excluded from Bylaw 784.