Lumping the grain crop - what is a bushel?

 Something entirely different today.....The summer wheat harvest is long been over in Australia. 

And now we hear on the radio each day the price of wheat - per bushel. 

What weight is a bushel I asked my husband this morning. We hear it all the time, but he didn't know either, so I went searching.... apparently A bushel (abbreviation: bsh. or bu.) is an imperial and US customary unit of volume based upon an earlier measure of dry capacity. 

But how was this determined? What volume is a bushel? I discovered that the bushel weight is different for different grains. According to Rayglen Commodities there are 48 pounds of barley in a bushel, 30lbs of sunflower, 34lbs oats, 56lbs of corn, and 60lbs of wheat (36.744 bushels to the tonne of wheat). Fascinating.... confused yet? ...... you can go to the link above to read more.

At its simplest, a bushel is a unit of measurement. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the U.S. bushel was derived from the Winchester bushel, a British measurement dating back to the 15th century. At one time, farm products could be measured by how much would fit in a bushel basket.  Read more at: Kanzas Wheat - What does a bushel mean to me? 

and this.....One bushel of wheat will yield approximately 42 pounds of white flour.....One bushel yields enough flour to make 70 one-pound loaves of white bread or 90 one-pound loaves of whole-wheat bread. 

I researched further. And I found out more of the history on the South Australian Government's history page - Transporting the Crop. .   

Traditionally, grain was packed in jute bags, mostly imported from India....These bags were handled manually until the end of World War 2..... Bags from the harvester were placed in heaps in the paddock for sewing.... The tops of the bags were sewn together by teams of bag-sewers using hemp twine. The bags were carried on the backs of "lumpers". 

I thought I had an old photo from my Dad of the wheat bags in the paddock, but all I could find was this one. 

The job of the lumper would have been strenuous and back-breaking work. Here is an interesting fact from Co-Operative Bulk Handling Limited. CBH Group on Faebook

 - On 9th December 2020, 93 years ago, Bill Cestrilli (pictured) established the CBH record for lumping and stacking the greatest number of wheat bags in one day. At Miling, (in the Western Australian wheatbelt north of Perth) Bill stacked a whopping 1,725 bags of wheat in eight hours - equating to 143 tonnes of grain. Not bad for a 74kg man! Here is a pic of Bill. 

I am not absolutely sure, but I think my uncle lumped wheat during the Depression in the wheatbelt. Here are another couple of pics I have borrowed from the net. 

Wheat bags were a very useful commodity, used for - veranda blinds, bed covers, stretcher bed bases, shoulder bags, rain covering, saddle blanket, room divider in a cottage, door mat, and many other uses you can read about here.... The mighty wheat bag

Below you can see a simple tent and bed base made from wheat bags which would have been typical in the wheatbelt during that era. We saw this display in a historical village in Wagin. My uncles slept on beds like this in a tent near the house throughout their youth. I think my Dad did too. We even had a "stretcher" like this at home. I remember sleeping on it once. 

To read more: 

Rayglen Commodities - Crop Bushel Weights 

Transporting the Crop. .  - South Australian Government history site 

The mighty wheat bag - Great Australian Story.com

Adelaide AZ - 1840s

Kanzas Wheat - What does a bushel mean to me? 

Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you and yours are well. We continue to be relatively safe from Covid here in Australia, although there are massive floods on the east coast right now, and a state of emergency has been declared in those areas. 

I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 
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