Granary

“ When one sows his field with one kind, Even though he makes two granaries,he gives one corner. If he sows two species, even though he makes one granary, He gives two corners. If he sows his field with two species of wheat, And makes one granary,he gives one corner, But if two granaries, two corners. ”

“ The first rude shanty has given place to a nice two-story frame house, well sheltered from sun and wind by the healthy young trees the farmer planted with his own hands, and in the rear are the snug barn and granary. ”

“ This upright granary forms a solid-looking, wall round the villages, and the people are not stingy, but take down maize and hand it to the men freely.
The women are very naked. They bring loads of provisions to sell, through the rain, and are eager traders for beads. Plantains, cassava, and maize, are the chief food. ”

“ On one occasion when we had climbed the outside ladder to the high door in the granary, when it was full of wheat, we tried the difficult feat of chasing mice across the top of the huge, soft mass of grain. ”

“ Usually the tiller of the soil had a right to the crop, although among the early Greeks the custom seems to be reversed, and the individual owned the land, but was compelled to place its proceeds into a common granary. ”

“ If a man has stored his grain in heaps in the building of another and an accident happens in the granary, or the owner of the building has disturbed the [Pg 325] heap and taken grain, or has disputed the amount of grain that was stored in his building, the owner of the grain shall give an account of his grain under oath, the owner of the building shall double the amount of grain which he took and restore it to the owner of the grain. ”

“ Under the influence of irrigation, commercial fertilizers and modern machinery the previously arid stretches of the country are converted into a granary that yields its largess not only to France but to more distant countries of the world. ”

“ The farmer shows them as little mercy as he does rats and mice, as they are very destructive, and carry off vast quantities of grain, which they store in hollow trees for use. Not contenting themselves with one granary, they have several in case one should fail, or perhaps become injured by accidental causes. ”

“ Sexual purity required of those who handle corn or enter a granary. She is also regarded with contempt for the rest of her life and may never look inside a granary for fear of spoiling the corn.”56.2 Among the Basutos in like manner “while the corn is exposed to view, all defiled persons are carefully kept from it. ”

“ Everywhere the same bountiful soil, the same superb orchards, the same ripe fields of wheat and barley, and silver rye. The peasants were at work, men and women, cutting the grain with rude scythes, binding it into sheaves, and stacking it in the fields. As we rode over the plain, the boys came running out to us with handfuls of grain, saluting us from afar, bidding us welcome as pilgrims, wishing us as many years of prosperity as there were kernels in their sheaves, and kissing the hands that gave them the harvest-toll. ”

“ The soil thus prepared by the painful and unrequited toil of those who had gone down to obscure graves, sorrowing and hopeless, offered less obstruction to the strong arms and better appliances of the reformers of a later day. Of the seed scattered by the early sowers, a grain found here and there a sheltering crevice, and struggled into life, bearing fruit that in the succession of years increased and multiplied until thousands were fed and strengthened by its harvest. ”

“ Nothing ever really tired me out. I could perform any of my duties with ease, and none of the men under me ever presumed to question my authority. As harvest came on I took my place on our new Marsh harvester, and bound my half of over one hundred acres of heavy grain.
The crop that year was enormous. At times, as I looked out over the billowing acres of wheat which must not only be reaped and bound and shocked and stacked but also threshed, before there was the slightest chance of my returning to the Seminary, my face grew long and my heart heavy. ”

“ How does he know what kind of grain he will reap at harvest time? Does wheat ever produce oats? Or clover seed produce wheat? What happened while the farmer slept? Who sowed the tares in his field? Who sows the tares in our minds? What do we call these tares? Should they be removed or permitted to grow? Should we be thankful to our parents for preventing tares from being sown? In what kind of soil did the grain grow to a fruitage of thirty, sixty and an hundred fold?
[192]
REAPING. THE HARVEST TIME OF LIFE.
Suggestion:—The object used is a small sheaf of grain. ”

“ Maize-barns, or granaries, are universal. The granaries are oblong, narrow structures, mostly built of granite, but sometimes of timber, and raised on walls or pillars about a man's height above the level of the ground. ”

“ Suppose that a peasant farmer in Brie has so many acres of meadow, so many acres of forest, so many acres of rich arable land and a good-sized vineyard; do you imagine that on his death one son will take the pastures, another the cornland, and so forth? Not a bit of it! Each child will claim a slice of each sort of soil; and their children again will subdivide, till the strips of meadow, rye, cabbage, or vine, are not fields at all, but merely gardens. ”

“ So well stocked are the pastures that they seem to be covered over with the cattle that are laid in them, and yet the pasture not overcharged; so well fed are the cattle that they are the ornament and the glory of the pastures in which they are fed. The valleys are so fruitful that they seem to be covered over with corn, in the time of harvest. The lowest parts of the earth are commonly the most fruitful, and one acre of the humble valleys is worth five of the lofty mountains. ”

“ If the grain now fills up the measure and leaves enough for a head to it, and still more, if it brims and runs over, this is a sign that the village will be very prosperous, and that every cultivator’s granaries will run over in the same way. ”

“ The granaries of the island of Syra, with the contrivance by which corn is there preserved at the present day, are thus described by Della Rocca:—“Les granges, appelées en Grec θεμονέα, ont communément une vingtaine de pieds de long, sur huit à dix de hauteur et de largeur. On les remplit jusqu’à la moitié de leur hauteur, de paille bien foulée: on pratique un espace de trois ou quatre pieds, que l’on remplit de grain. ”

“ By tilling the ground, I would not be understood to mean any settled mode of agriculture, requiring cattle, inclosures, or implements of husbandry. Grain made but a very subordinate part of their subsistence, which was chiefly derived from fishing and hunting. The little they had was maize; this, with kidney-beans and tobacco, the only plants they cultivated, was sown in some very pleasant fields along the Mohawk river, by the women, who had no implements of tillage but the hoe, and a kind of wooden spade. ”

“ Groves heavy with foliage, rivers curving away into the glooms of bending elm and bass-wood trees, fields of wheat and corn alternating with smooth pastures where the cattle fed—a long panorama of glorified landscape which his escape from manual labor now enabled him to see the beauty of, its associations of toil and dirt no longer acutely painful. ”

“ When a crop is sown, a handful of grain is sprinkled over a stone in the corner of the field nearest to the temple, in order that the god may protect the growing crop from hail, blight, and the ravages of wild beasts; and at harvest he receives the first-fruits in order that he may save the garnered grain from the inroads of rats and insects.333 Among the hill tribes near [pg 118] Rajamahall, in India, when the kosarane grain is being reaped in November or early in December, a festival is held as a thanksgiving before the new grain is eaten. ”

“ We rapidly descended to their level, and the remainder of our first day’s journeying was over a flat country, whose natural prolific soil, interspersed as it was at short distances with small tributary streams, would have been a sight to gladden the heart of any emigrant who should seek for rich pasturages for his cattle—abundant harvest of wheat and barley—rich orchards and valuable plantations. ”

“ But the cultivated plants—wheat, millet, etc.—differ from all existing varieties, and invariably have smaller seeds or fruits.22 This shows us that man has evidently been able to effect considerable change by cultivation, in the common grains, during the course of the many centuries which separate the Neolithic times from our own age. But if this rate of change be adopted as a measure of time, what shall we say is to the antiquity demanded to explain the origin of cultivated grain from the wild grasses of their first form? ”

“ Thanks to the frequentation of these lands for centuries by horses and cattle, these alluvial deposits, rich in natural manures, have an apparently inexhaustible fertility. Awakened by labour from its eternal sleep, the soil is so vigorous that one finds numerous instances where the same grain, sown for twenty successive years in the same place, yields always the same abundant harvest. ”

“ The house I have been describing was still called The Grange, and such as I have stated had been its original destination. The long building had been the real grange or barn of a neighboring abbey; the taller building had been added afterward for the convenience of the abbot's bailiff. When the monasteries were suppressed by the arch plunderer Henry VIII., we all know how many and how great were those who shared in the pickings of the defunct fowl of Rome. The Grange and the farm attached to it fell to the lot of a nobleman in the neighborhood, together with much other valuable property. ”

“ With plains which ought to be waving with luxuriant harvests of wheat and corn, her children are fed from our overflowing granaries. With woods filled with trees fit for building, she sends all the way to the Provinces for shingles, joist, and boards. ”

“ I have long been lame in my feet, and I have got just one grain, and am carrying it to my children. The King's sons are sitting in the cellar eating their food; you go and fetch a grain from there; why should you take mine from me? ”

“ English rural districts which had before been self-supporting—growing their own corn and feeding their own cattle—now turned their corn-land into pasture-land, and sought grain among their neighbours. ”

“ But tell me of yourself—are you in the grange movement?"
"Well, not exactly, but I've helped all I could."
"What is the condition of the grange in your county?"
"It seems to be going down."
She was silent for some time. Her face saddened with deep thought. "Yes, I'm afraid it is. The farmers can't seem to hold together. Strange, aint it? Other trades and occupations have their organizations and stand by each other, but the farmer can't seem to feel his kinship. Well, I suppose he must suffer greater hardships before he learns his lesson. But God help the poor wives while he learns! ”

“ Have you not just now said that your people were dying, while your granaries are full? No, no; I want no corn; but when corn has truly risen to twenty florins, then I shall open my granaries, and my crops shall be for sale. ”

“ If I find you plowing in your field and your neighbor walking behind you sowing grain or dropping corn, and then I find you in the fall shucking out the corn together, and I find your neighbor taking half of it to his barn and you taking half of it to your barn, I make up my mind that you have had some dealings on the corn question. ”

“ A rich farmer was one day standing in his yard inspecting his fields and gardens. The corn was growing up vigorously and the fruit-trees were heavily laden with fruit. The grain of the year before still lay in such immense heaps on the floors that the rafters could hardly bear it. ”

“ I asked.
“There’s four of them—children of a farmer near Ploumar here. . . . The parents are dead now,” he added, after a while. “The grandmother lives on the farm. In the daytime they knock about on this road, and they come home at dusk along with the cattle. . . . It’s a good farm.” ”

“ Before his door the women spin their flax, and the rough skin clothing of his ancestors has given way to garments of woven stuff. Up the hillside stretches the field of flax, and beside it another of wheat or of barley. The seeds which their ancestors once gath- ered from the scattered tufts of the wild grasses, these I>ate Stone Age men have slowly learned may be planted near the dwelling in ground prepared for the purpose. Thus wild grain is domes- ticated, and agriculture has been introduced. ”

“ For those who cultivate land which is alike arid, heavy, and barren, and in which they sow seeds, do not make so great a harvest as those who cultivate a fertile and mellow soil and sow their grain in that. ”

“ Wheat, barley, and rice, maize, fruit, and wine, are but a few of the staples. Great farmsteads, with barns whose mighty lofts and groaning mows attest the importance of Lombard agriculture, are grouped into the hamlets which abound at the shortest intervals. ”

“ The Countrey so exceedingly pleasant and healthful, that ’tis usual for sick Persons of other Provinces to come hither to recover their health, only by the benefit of a good Air. The Soil so abundantly fertile of all sorts of Grain, that of four measures of Seed, it hath been often observ’d, they have reap’d the next Harvest, more than so many hundred measures of the same Grain. ”