The McLouth Threshing Bee this weekend will offer visitors a chance to view farm life before modern machines.

Farmers and city dwellers alike are invited to learn about early 20th century farming at Antique Engine Park, 911 Home St., Darin Edwards, a bee organizer, said.

The bee features demonstrations of antique farming equipment in practice and commemorates the threshing process.

The McLouth event is one of the longest-running threshing bees in the county. In the 1950s, Slim Watson, of McLouth, thought to invite the community to his home, serve food and demonstrate how his farm equipment worked, Edwards said. Fifty-seven years later, the bee still thrives.

Threshing is the process of separating the edible parts of a crop from the inedible chaff — the protective casing surrounding the grain. Cornhusks, for example, are chaff.

Farmers today typically use combine harvesters, which both harvest and thresh the grain, but early farmers had to use other means, Edwards said.

“Back in the day they used steam-powered tractors and threshing machines,” Edwards said. “They would have to use a pitchfork and feed the wheat into the threshing machine, which shoots out grain one way and hay the other way.”

Edwards said the event gives visitors a new respect for technological advances.

“A lot of people haven’t seen steam engines and don’t know how people used to work back in the day,” Edwards said. “It’s neat to see how much manpower it took.”

Other antique farm equipment, such as sawmills and rock crushers, also will be demonstrated this weekend.

“Basically anything you can think of that would be used to construct something or for farming back to the early 1900s will be there,” Edwards said.

Food, civil war reenactments, an antique and classic car show and a tractor pull will also be featured.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.mclouththreshingbee.com.