A threshing machine combined four farm operations in one unit: threshing, separating, cleaning, and stacking straw. Powered by a long belt connected to a tractor power take-off pulley, such machines served farmers in southern Utah and were privately owned by individuals or groups who contracted with farmers. As grain ripened, the machine was moved into fields and set up, then traveled from farm to farm through the summer until wheat, barley, oats, and sugar beet seeds were threshed and put into gunny sacks. The work required a five-man crew laboring through the hot summer, often including school teachers who spent their months away from teaching on the threshing crew. Wagon or sled loads of grain or sugar beet shocks were hauled to the loading chute and pitched onto the conveyor belt, after which the machine cleaned the grain or seeds and discharged them through a spout for a sacker to fill one-hundred-pound sacks and sew them shut. An acre could produce up to fifty bushels of cleaned wheat. Chaff and straw were blown through a twenty-foot cylinder into a large stack, and the straw was later used as bedding for farm animals. These machines eventually gave way to combines that completed the harvest in a single operation.