50 WHEAT AND ^^■OMAN 



and that patch of cleared land looks to be barely 

 one- tenth of the field." 



But the fact was that those two granaries never 

 contained a thousand bushels of grain. There is a 

 simple table in Canadian farm statistics by which 

 one can calculate, through the number of pounds 

 of grain due to a bushel, the amount of grain in a 

 granary by measuring the amount of space it takes 

 up. The rule is to multiply length by breadth by 

 height by eight, and cut off the final figure. Thus 

 a granary measuring fourteen feet by fourteen 

 by seven should contain one thousand and ninety- 

 seven bushels of wheat. Oats and barley take up 

 more space in relation to weight. As oats weigh 

 but thirty-five pounds to the bushel and barley 

 forty-five against the sixty pounds which should 

 find place in the orthodox bushel of wheat, thus 

 the threshing-charge for the coarser grains is 

 nominally less, but really higher, than the charge 

 for wheat, and the Canadian plan of feeding oats 

 in sheaf saves the cost of threshing and renders the 

 winter chore of stock-feeding considerably fighter 

 as the beasts consume first the oats and then the 

 more appetizing portions of the oat-straw, but there 

 is always a considerable amount left over for ready- 

 to-hand bedding. However, some farmers think 

 that the waste which is entailed through the 

 shelling of the oats in stack outweighs the cost of 

 threshing, and the greater number put aside suffi- 

 cient sheaves for threshing to yield at least three 

 hundred bushels. Wheat badly frozen or cut on 

 the green side will fall below the average standard 

 of weight to the bushel, but on the whole the 

 method works out well, and its rule should be 



