thrashing gang

noun, a community of farmers who went from farm to farm to aid in thrashing; also ‘threshing gang’; see also thrashing crew

“I got farmer’s lung, they call it — the doctors call it asthma — first year when I helped with the thrashing gang. I had to go in the mow … I was spitting dust for two weeks!”

“We were willing to do all kinds of work. Some of the other ones, they just want to go in a threshing gang. See a rainy day, didn’t have to work.”

“Harvest time, I guess, I started going on thrashing gangs, and I’d be maybe twelve years old, and he’d be pitching on in the field, pitching the sheaves of wheat or grain onto the wagons, and you’d come down to the table, and there’d be tables set for about twelve men.”