THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



185 



applicable to the southern counties of England, may not be 

 unacceptable to our readers at the present. 



By " eastern counties " is meant that tract of country 

 lying between the Tay and Spey, including the counties of 

 Forfar, Kincardine, Aberdeen, and Banff — a district not the 

 most propitious as to climate, but all the better, in this re- 

 spect, for illustration. 



In wet harvests the universal maxim is, never to post- 

 pone anything till to-morrow that can be done to-day, 

 always providing for the worst. In such seasons it is often, 

 from first to last, a pitched battle with the weather, the 

 farmer himself being always in the forefront of the fray, 

 stoiming and in a storm, be it wet or dry. As the eldest 

 son of a good but hard master, we can honestly say it was 

 trying work for growing bones and sinews, when the 

 Grampians began to dance and skip like lambs on a hillock, 

 when we got to the headland. But no quarters were given. 

 If the corn was wet in the morning, and you were idle> 

 double work must be done in the after-part of the day ; and 

 if }ou got early to bed in wet weather, you must get up the 

 sooner tomorrow morning, if dry. 



In all cases of this kind, masters and servants, generally 

 speaking, thoroughly understand each other's interests, and 

 accordingly are ready and willing to act together whenever 

 the golden opportunity occurs. If reapers are allowed to 

 recruit their strength in a wet morning, they will go into it, 

 when the day breaks up, with a spirit and a force which 

 otherwise they would not, and even could not do. And 

 even if they have two or three fine working days together) 

 but are sure of the first wet day to themselves, they will 

 then daily go through an extra quantity of work. What 

 would be the thought of the general, who, under similar 

 circumstances, had not his soldiers fresh and ready for the 

 fight? Just so it is with the farmer in the harvest-field. If 

 half the working time is wet, and barely the other half dry, 

 as is often the case, nothing can be more short- sighted than 

 to dabble hands at some dirty jobs during the former period 

 when they have to perform double work during the latter. 

 In a wet harvest always have your hands ready for the on- 

 slaught, and never squander a single hour that should be 

 spent directly or indirectly for the harvest. 



The second thing in a wet season is, to have the teams 

 fresh and ready for their extra work whenever occasion re- 

 quires. In this ease, as in the last, the farmer must look 

 often a long way before him, for if his teams are not pre- 

 pared to do the extra work within the short time a wet 

 season allows, the upshot need not be told. Night work in 

 carrying is generally avoided in the counties in question, if 

 ])ossible ; hut we have frequently gone on two days and the 

 intervening night without stopping, and once three days 

 and the two intervening nights, stopping only one hour 

 each night, and when we awoke on the fourth morning and 

 perceived about three acres of stooks in the rain, there was 

 loud murmuring in all corners of the camp, that we were not 

 held on to the previous midnight, so as to have secured the 

 whole. If prepared for it, men and horses will go thiough 

 a vast amount of work, in such cases, to secure " the fruits 

 of the earth," but not otherwise. 



Men and horses ready for work, the next thing for notice 

 is the work itself, " the cutting, stooking, and stacking the 

 corn." 



In the former of these operations — the cutting — the details 

 of the practice depend much upon the quality of the crop, 

 as to liow it will stand bad weather. Some fields of wheat, 

 for example, differ widely from others in this respect; so do 

 those of barley, and the other kindsof corn. Even in indivi- 



dual fields, it often occurs that the corn may be safely cut 

 wet in some places, while it would be certain ruin to do so 

 in others, We never cut wet corn, if possible ; but in a wet 

 harvest it never could be wholly avoided. It will thus rea- 

 dily be seen that it would baffle the pen of any writer to 

 chronicle, even at the time, a faithful account of all the 

 details of reaping in a bad harvest, so fitfully changeable is 

 the weather, and diversified and voluminous are the conse- 

 quences that follow, every sheaf having its own matter 

 of fact to illustrate ; all, therefore, that we can do is, to give 

 a general outline of those principles upon which the prac- 

 tice is founded, so far as they are likely to prove useful 

 to the southern farmer. 



Passing over the reaping machine, the scythe, the reap- 

 ing hook, and sickle, as implements with which all are now 

 equally familiar, what first engages the attention of the far- 

 mei", whichever of these implemeuts he uses for cutting, is 

 to get his corn dry into small sheaves, and loosely tied or 

 bound before the straw is too ripe and broken. There are 

 three reasons for this : first, the sheaves can be more loosely 

 bound, they stand better in the stook, while they at the same 

 time permit a free circulation of air, the grain being thus 

 less liable to malt than otherwise ; second, they dry sooner 

 when wet through ; and third, they are sooner ready for the 

 stack-yard. In each of these cases the practical conclu- 

 sion is so manifest, that it would be superfluous to advance 

 a single sentence in corroboration of their importance. 

 Large tighl-howid sheaves are the curse of a rvet harvest, both 

 in the field and stack-yard. 



As to the actual size of the sheaf no general rule can be laid 

 down, unless it be — as small as it will stand in the stook. In 

 fine dry seasons the rule, or gauge, for a sheaf in " threaving " 

 (/. e., where reapers are paid for the number of sheaves cut) 

 is twelve inches through ; but in wet harvests we never used 

 to allow above the halfof this size, and often even less than 

 that — or three small sheaves out of one ordinary one. It is 

 vexatiously teasing to get hands to make such small sheaves ; 

 and equally troublesome to get them loosely and properly 

 tied, so as not to be continually breaking in the frequent 

 handling that often takes place afterwards. It is, however, 

 a matter of necessity in bad weather ; for the farmer who 

 successfully attends to it seldom fails to secure his crop with- 

 out sustaining very much harm, while the reverse is the 

 never-failing misfortune of him who does not. 



Much depends upon the quality of the straw. If it is soft, 

 leafy, or full of grass, many are the difficulties experienced 

 in getting it safely harvested in wet seasons like the present. 

 We have known cases where a single sheaf that contained 

 much wet grass fire-fanged a whole staok, which without that 

 sheafwould have kept well. In cutting crops of this kind, 

 therefore, the farmer must always look forward to conse- 

 quences in his stack-yard. Where a fifth part of the area 

 has been sown out with grass seeds (rye grass and clover), 

 and where the clover rises high amongst the corn — as it fre- 

 quently does — every opportunity that occurs is embraced to 

 get it cut when dry and stooked, so as to defend rain. If 

 this cannot be done, the crop, whether barley, wheat, or oats, 

 is either cut above the clover as much as possible, or else the 

 clover is shaken out and given to stock. We have adopted 

 various plans of this kind, the maxim being never to tie up 

 wet clover in the sheaf. The same maxim is applicable to 

 soft and leafy short straw. We have frequently left standing 

 crops of this quality, cutting round about them when we were 

 obliged to cut wet, going back to them when the weather 

 broke up, so as to get the sheaves into the stook dry. Some- 

 times we have left them standing until tit to be cut and carted 

 to tlie stack-yard. On the other hand, if soft stuff of this 

 kind is much lodged or lying flat upon the ground, and offer- 

 ing to rot — no unfrequent case — then, if obliged to cut wet 

 corn, ihis was the field, or part of the field, we prefened 

 going to, for the simple reason that boh corn and straw 



