HINTS ON RAISING FARM CROPS 15 
After the grain has been cut by the grain bind¬ 
er, already mentioned, the bundles of wheat 
should be immediately gathered and put into 
shocks. This consists of piling about a dozen 
of these bundles together, standing them up¬ 
right, and leaning them one against the other, 
with a couple of bundles placed on top. This 
enables the wheat to rid itself of considerable 
moisture before being threshed. 
Some farmers prefer to stack their grain be¬ 
fore threshing. This is to be commended, as 
the wheat is protected from damaging rains, 
and also is enabled to go through what is 
known as a “sweating process” before being 
threshed. A certain amount of skill is needed 
to he able to stack grain, as the pile is made 
wide at the base, and gradually tapers to 
the top. 
Some farmers thresh from the shock, while 
others thresh from the stack. Unless a farmer 
is reasonably sure that he can get a threshing 
machine to come to his farm at the right time, 
he is far safer to stack his grain, rather than 
i to take a chance on the weather. Of course, 
shock threshing is cheaper, as the grain does 
not have to be handled as much by this method, 
but a better color and quality of grain can be 
secured by first stacking it, and stacking is a 
good insurance or protection against damaging 
storms. / 
There are only two very serious diseases 
that attack w T heat: rust, which attacks both the 
leaves and the stems ,and smut. Both are due 
to fungi, and no successful treatment has yet 
