104 A FARMER'S YEAR 



the first time during the present winter the lawn is white, although 

 the weather is not bad enough to stop the thrashing. The 

 steamer began to work at the All Hallows Farm on the little 

 stack of barley from No. 38, the five-and-a-half-acre piece of glebe 

 land. Now it is that we see what a drought, such as we experienced 

 last year, means upon these light lands, for this barley is not 

 yielding more than four coomb an acre. Next the wheat from 

 the All Hallows six-acre, No. 29, was dealt with. This is a good 

 piece of stiffish land, so here the tale was different. Notwith- 

 standing that the corn suffered a great deal from the attacks of 

 sparrows, it cast about ten coomb an acre a result which in so 

 poor a wheat year may be considered satisfactory. When these 

 stacks were finished the machine moved to the Home Farm 

 (smashing a gate in the process) and began to thrash the oats and 

 beans from the nine-acre pit field, No. 23. These are pedigree 

 black oats, which we are now trying for the first time. The 

 return seems to be good considering the year, about sixteen 

 coomb an acre, I think. The beans also are thrashing out well, 

 about eleven coomb to the acre. 



It is curious to look at the steamer and listen to its hungry swell- 

 ing hum as it devours sheaf after sheaf of corn, and to compare it 

 with the style of thrashing that I can remember when I was a 

 boy. Now the straw is tossed automatically to the elevator, or to 

 the pitchforks of those who are stacking it ; the husk is shaken 

 out and rejected, grit and stones are caught and cast away, and 

 the pure grain is sorted into three or four classes in accordance 

 with the size and quality of the kernels, all by the ingenious 

 mechanism of a not very complicated machine. In the old days 

 the thrashing was done by an instrument like a large windlass, 

 with four or six horses attached to .the spokes and a man seated 

 on a little stool in the centre armed with a long whip to keep 

 them up to their work as they walked round and round. The 

 actual machinery that did the thrashing was hidden inside a barn, 

 and I cannot recall sufficient of its details to describe it. I do, 

 however, remember seeing the flail used from time to time, the last 



