Homesteading 



sufficiently to allow us to begin on the oats that 

 were first cut. Jones himself, however, decided 

 to finish cutting the remaining wheat, taking 

 Tom to do the shocking, while his son and I were 

 to begin stacking the oats with the team of bulls. 



As the sheaves were still very heavy to handle, 

 it was decided to build as small stacks as we reason- 

 ably could. These stacks are usually placed in 

 square groups of four, with space between each 

 stack to allow the separator to be run in between. 

 They are not thatched, and are often temporary, 

 to save the grain and facilitate threshing, but 

 it is important to keep out rain or melted snow, 

 so there is considerable art required in building 

 a good stack. 



The most approved method seems to be to 

 commence by building a large round shock in 

 the centre, then to work spirally outwards, or 

 rather in rings, beginning the next ring where 

 the last finished. The butts, of course, are laid 

 outwards, but the head of each sheaf should rest 

 on and overlay the butts of those forming the 

 next inside ring. 



The stacks may be about twenty or twenty- 

 five feet in diameter, and as the centre should 

 be kept high, the arrangement has the effect of 

 giving the layers of sheaves a constant outward 

 slope, and when the outer ring is reached, it should 



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