Hiram in the Middle West : $b Or, A young farmer's upward struggleTodd, Burbank L.
General
Hiram in the Middle West : $b Or, A young farmer's upward struggle
Todd, Burbank L.
Agriculture -- Juvenile fiction; Pastoral fiction
Sister, in a gingham frock and one of Miss Pringle's sunbonnets,
was out with Hiram all over the big farm. She knew enough about
agricultural pursuits now, and loved nature enough, to enjoy thoroughly
Sunnyside and all it meant to Hiram. The latter, too, found in Sister a
confidante such as he had never had before.
She could help, too. The clover crop ripened suddenly because of a
dry spell. The brilliant crimson blossoms which gave to the fields a
blush such as no other flower gives, began to turn brown at their base
petals. The mower had to be brought into use at once--in fact, two of
them.
Sister rode the tedder and managed to stir the clover well behind
both mowing machines. In spite of the dry spell it was a heavy crop
of clover hay, and the odor of it ascended in the noonday heat as the
incense must have ascended from the altars to the Sun God in ancient
times.
The two teams of Percherons were at work six days a week. As soon as
the clover was made and drawn to the mows, the big plows were put
in to turn over the clover sod. This was raked lightly, rolled, and
then the corn was drilled. The early corn was already up and under the
second or third cultivation. Everything at Sunnyside was on the rush.
The cattle were on regular pasture. Twelve of the sleekest and
oldest were held in the pens for fattening. They would be the first
"commercial crop" since Hiram had come to Sunnyside sold off the farm,
save a part of the previous year's wheat.
Following the plowing of the clover sod, the areas where oats had been
and the cowpeas put in for a soilage crop were turned under, and corn
was planted on that land. Hiram was planning for a real corn crop this
year, and for the most part he used the seed corn he had raised from
that of Daniel Brown. Another corn crib was built at this time to be
ready for the expected harvest.
As soon as the corn was planted where the peas were turned under for
manure, the regular haying came on. Such hay as there was on Sunnyside
had to be harvested in a hurry. It was a thin crop, for it had been
seeded to timothy and red top several years before. Hiram decided to
plow most of this meadow land for wheat in the fall and seed some of
the present wheat- and corn-land for meadow. He turned the cattle into
the mowing fields, therefore, as soon as the hay was out of the way.
No further menace had attacked the wheat. The fields of grain on
Sunnyside were a beautiful sight--now turning a golden yellow and with
the heavy heads nodding to the harvest. Battick's new variety was at
least a foot taller than that in any other field on the farm.
The man had watched the special wheat as a mother cares for her
new-born babe. Night and day he hung about the edges of the field. He
even crept over the patch that had been burned seeking for any of the
insects that might not have been destroyed by the fire.
"I think that man must be more than half crazy, as Jim says he is,"
Sister said to Hiram in commenting upon Battick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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