TJic CoHiitrv Gcntlcvia'iis Ma^razinc 



237 



^hc Jiarm. 



THE SECURING AND THRASHING OF CORN. 



NOT often are the farmers of this country 

 so happily circumstanced as they have 

 been, and are still this year with regard to the 

 weather, with which they have been and are fa- 

 voured during the corn harvest : seldom have 

 they been called upon during a long, long 

 course of years to begin the happy labour of 

 a harvest home so early in the season as they 

 have been called upon in this ; for which, 

 and the concomitant blessings which attend 

 upon it, let us be thankful to the Giver of 

 all good. True, as man seems born to dis- 

 content, or at least seems to have great 

 pleasure in keeping in hand a stock of it, and, 

 however niggardly in other things, is extremely 

 liberal in the dispensing of it, we need not 

 be surprised at hearing the grumbles of those 

 who think themselves aggrieved in that, while 

 they have had good corn crops, they have no 

 roots; and, while congratulated upon having 

 such splendid weather for harvestingtheircorn, 

 lift the eyes and shake the head as to the 

 want of rain for their pastures or their 

 meadows. It is a happy frame of mind for 

 any one to be in, to look at the benefits they 

 have received, not at the losses they may 

 have sustained — to look at the bright side 

 rather than at the dark one of the cloud. But 

 Idc all this as it may — and the thoughts that it is 

 calculated to raise are by no means valueless or 

 lacksuggestiveness — we turn to the more imme- 

 diate purposes of our paper, and give a few 

 remarks or notes upon the securing of corn. 

 As our readers are aware, in some districts 

 in this country there are two systems prac- 

 tised in securing corn : one in which the 

 whole of it is taken to the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of the homestead or farm-steading, 

 and stacked up in the rick or stack-yard; the 

 other system, which, however, is not followed 

 out in all its integrity — being, where adopted, 



only in some cases partially adopted — is the 

 having the corn stacked in or near the field 

 in which it was grown ; this being done 

 chiefly by those who approve of thrashing out 

 the grain in the field by means of a portable 

 engine, or from motives of economy, or pre- 

 sumed economy of time at the period when 

 the corn is ready for stacking — with the view 

 of getting this quickly done — and, thereafter, 

 at a more convenient time, carting it off to 

 the farm-steading. Of the merits of these 

 two systems comparatively little need be said 

 here, as, in the opinion of by far the greater 

 majority of practical men, with which we 

 heartily concur, the merit — to put the matter 

 paradoxically — of the field stacking and thrash- 

 ing system is that it has little or no merit at all. 

 One has only to examine, as we have often ex- 

 amined, the operation of thrashing out grain 

 in the field by means of a portable steam- 

 engine, to see that it is an eminently unsound 

 one. The immediate and direct evils, or at 

 all events evil contingencies, which are con- 

 nected with it, are quite enough to condemn 

 it ; as, for example, the risk there is of being 

 interrupted during the actual thrashing out of 

 the grain by bad weather ; the litter made in 

 the fields by the blowing about in heavy 

 winds of the broken straws, and the loss sus- 

 tained by the same thing happening to the chaff 

 and " cavings," or from them being trodden 

 under foot ; and last, and probably not least, 

 the danger arising from having so combustible 

 a material as straw in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of so capital a supplier of firing 

 material as a steam-boiler furnace. We 

 never saw a portable engine at work under 

 such circumstances but we were struck 

 with the wTCtched incongruity of the arrange- 

 ment. Men are only considered prudent who 

 keep the source of fire from combustible 



