Historically, something somewhat different happened: if one farmer owned a threshing machine, other farmers might bring their grain to him and rent time on the machine.
Or, when portable threshing machines were built, someone would travel around to different farms and thresh there for a fee, then move on.
(But a portable machine was nontrivial, especially when the machines were horse-powered, check out this diagram [from this source]—a horse was hooked up to that harness at letter H on the diagram, so you can get a sense of how big that thing was. That model would have been stationary.)
Historically, something somewhat different happened: if one farmer owned a threshing machine, other farmers might bring their grain to him and rent time on the machine.
Or, when portable threshing machines were built, someone would travel around to different farms and thresh there for a fee, then move on.
(But a portable machine was nontrivial, especially when the machines were horse-powered, check out this diagram [from this source]—a horse was hooked up to that harness at letter H on the diagram, so you can get a sense of how big that thing was. That model would have been stationary.)