Quite an ambitious project for a town of less than 2,000 residents, the museum consists of the main "Ranger Station" building, a Trapper’s Cabin recreation, Country Store complete with living quarters, an outdoor shed housing antique farm equipment and a Livery Stable housing a portable steam engine, a 1925 threshing machine and a 1947 Farmall Cub tractor. Beside the livery stable is a motorized Adams road scraper.
This is the thresher in the Livery Stable. The date, "1925", is painted on the thresher above the name of the maker, "M Moody & Sons Co", of Terrebonne, Quebec. According to an old ad of theirs in a 1919 trade journal, the company began manufacturing threshing machines as early as 1844 or 1845. This is a small thresher, likely intended for the smaller farms of Quebec and Ontario. Manually fed, two of the crew stood on a platform, cut the sheaves and fed them into the thresher by hand. Moody's nineteenth and early twentieth century threshers were built on wooden wagon chassis with wooden wheels. This example is slightly later, resting on steel spoked wheels. Essentially all wood, this is the second Moody & Sons thresher we've found in BC, the other in Keremeos and in much worse condition
We're not sure what may be missing from this thresher, beyond the belts, which are always gone. A very basic thresher, this one seems not to have a grain auger, the grain simply running from the sieves out a spout over one of the rear wheels. We assume that grain would have been sacked directly at the spout. Also, there is not a straw stacker on this unit, the straw spilling off the end of the straw walkers. The chaff on the sieves was blown out the back by the blower mounted ahead of the sieves.
Matthew Moody emigrated from Ireland to Lower Canada (now Quebec), and in 1833 established a blacksmith shop in Terrebonne, about 40 km. North of Montreal. Matthew Moody & Sons was founded in 1845 as a maker of agricultural equipment. In the 20th century they made a small range of woodworking and metalworking machinery, including metal lathes and wood planers.
From Vintage Machinery
Admission to the museum is by donation.