JOY IN HARVEST 255 



time till after harvest will shoot up and top the barley 

 stems, as now and again weeds will top a Canadian 

 crop. Instead of the graceful company of drooped heads, 

 bowing to the season in level ranks, a muddle of contrary 

 growths intervenes, and harvest and haysel uncomfortably 

 commingle. 



But, year in year out, the acres yield their three or four 

 quarters if no more of grain, and the corn defeats its enemies 

 if it suffers in the contest. The cutters-and-binders go through 

 it, and the harvesters pitchfork the sheaves into stocks. It 

 is told in a country place how a new landowner, of little 



WILD BARLEY 



country knowledge, was fretted in his energetic soul at the 

 waste of labour and time, as he said, of stacking up corn 

 sheaves in stocks in the field. He gave orders that the 

 sheaves should be carted straight to the ricks as they fell from 

 the cutters-and-binders. His orders, which made a good 

 tale in the village, were of course disobeyed. If there were 

 no need to let the corn dry and mature awhile in the sheaves 

 to complete the ripening of the time of growth, harvest would 

 lose a part of its most distinctive beauty. Few pictures 

 appeal to the eye more impressively than the stubble aisles 

 divided by the pillars of the stocks spaced with a regularity 

 almost architectural. The scene keeps at the flood for a little 

 longer the high tide of the year. Harvest is a shorter, a more 



