Grain shovel

The grain shovel is one of the important auxiliary tools used on the farm. It was used to move the grain to the side of the threshing floor during threshing with a flail, to transfer it to the storage vessels – crates, baskets, sacks, and to clean the grain from the chaff (grain spinning). To do this, grain was sprinkled from above by shovel with both of the barn doors open. The wind carried the light chaff to the other end of the threshing floor, and the heavier grain, already free of impurities, was ready to be put into the pot or storage vessel. A grain shovel is a heavily indented shovel similar to a flat spoon. Sometimes the working part, called a spoon, scoop or dagger, was in the shape of a half cylinder. The handle and bucket were made from a single piece of wood, usually poplar or aspen. The presented bucket dates from the turn of the 19th and 20th century, from the village of Zastań on the island of Wolin. It entered the ethnographic collection of the National Museum in Szczecin in 1970 thanks to a private donor from Germany. Iwona Karwowska