The Old Threshing Machine From Sarbi Village, Budesti Commune, Maramures County, Romania. Stock Photo

Village Sarbi is famous for the Traditional Technical Architecture Ensemble, a functional open-air museum. The old threshing machine in this complex is powered by the waters of the Cosau river. A threshing machine or a thresher is a piece of farm equipment that separates grain seed from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with flails: such hand threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of agricultural labour by the 18th century. Mechanization of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery from farm labour.