Harvest home

“ “The year of jubilee has come;
Gather the gifts of Earth with equal hand;
Henceforth ye too may share the birthright soil,
The corn, the wine, and all the harvest-home.” ”

“ The grain-harvest has been given to Summer; of all its treasures, she preserves alone the fragrant buckwheat and the golden maize. The nobler fruits are all hers—the finer peaches and plums, the choicest apples, pears, and grapes. The homely, but precious root-harvest belongs to her—winter stores for man and his herds. And now, when the year is drawing to a close, when the blessings of the earth have been gathered and stored, when every tree and plant has borne its fruits, when every field has yielded its produce, why should the sun shine brightly now? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still, all the dull day, all the bleak night, one crop is growing, out of which poor men make their bread, and pile fire in the grate, and comfort their little children. A crop as important in its way as many a one grown and sown under the genial influence of soft rain and summer sunshine; a harvest, the fruit of which in the season of its consumption is regarded as a blessing, as a healthful luxury, and as grateful to the palate as rich ripe wine or strawberries newly plucked. It is the ice harvest. ”

“ What more natural than for the family to gather in the fine summer months beneath the shade of the farms, amid its herds so full of life, to enjoy the beauty of the harvest ripened with the warm kisses of the sun? ”

“ Every morning the sun came up a red ball, quickly drank the dew, and started a quivering excitement in all living things. In great harvest seasons like that one, the heat, the intense light, and the important work in hand draw people together and make them friendly. Neighbours helped each other to cope with the burdensome abundance of man-nourishing grain; women and children and old men fell to and did what they could to save and house it. ”

“ We have had much rain, but not too much for the hay and wheat. The ground is as full of water as a soaked sponge, the wells are full to the brim, and all the streams are either overflowing their banks or full to the level of the ground. Enthusiasts say that never before has there been a better prospect of a good harvest. The fruit trees are crowded with blossoms that have not yet opened. The garden, looked at across the chicken-wire fence, shows the seeds and weeds all sprouting lustily, but the ground is too wet for any work to be done. ”

“ When the gardener wishes bleached celery, or seedless bananas, or monster squashes, he gives special food in the soil of the plants, or covers them from the sun, or nips off the spraying tendrils, that he may produce the variety he covets, but when the farmer would raise corn or wheat for the millions, he ploughs deep into the soil of the prairie, sows his seed broadcast, and trusts it to the free influences of the sun and the winds, and the harvest that he reaps is reproductive, and may be multiplied for hundreds of years. ”

“ Consider what a vast crop is thus annually shed on the earth! This, more than any mere grain or seed, is the great harvest of the year. The trees are now repaying the earth with interest what they have taken from it. They are discounting. They are about to add a leaf’s thickness to the depth of the soil. This is the beautiful way in which Nature gets her muck, while I chaffer with this man and that, who talks to me about sulphur and the cost of carting. We are all the richer for their decay. I am more interested in this crop than in the English grass alone or in the corn. ”

“ The spade is at work in the vegetable garden, the ploughs and harrows in the fields. And the sowing begins—that's a trifling matter of course: they are sowing the future harvest! When summer has come there's the mowing, the husbandman's first holiday—that's a trifling matter too! ”

“ A farmer ploughs his land, then sows his seed, and then waits months for the harvest. The Church too frequently scratches the hard ground with an impatient hand, drops in a few seeds, and immediately breaks into lamentations, because no instantaneous harvest springs forth. ”

“ Rotation husbandry also distributes the labour of the farm over the year. After harvest the farmyard manure is carted on to the land. This is followed by wheat sowing. In the winter there is the stock to be fed. The spring brings barley sowing, the early summer the cleaning of the land for the roots. ”

“ Year after year, from the early history of the country, the land has yielded her increase in cheerful abundance; the fields have been filled with the finest of wheat, and maize, and rice, and sugar; the orchards and gardens, ay, the very woods and wastes, have yielded all their harvest of grateful fruits; the herds have fed in peace within a thousand quiet valleys, the flocks have whitened ten thousand green and swelling hills ”

“ Nature elsewhere rich in hints to the gardener and the farmer is not silent here. A lesson plainly taught in all this apparatus for the dispersal of seeds is that the more various the planting the fuller the harvest. Now that from the wheat fields comes a cry of disappearing gains, it is time to heed the story told in the unbroken prairie that diversity in sowing means wealth in reaping. ”

“ Like the boys and girls these older gardeners are pleased with the picture of the result of their seed sowing. With enthusiasm they enter upon the task of planting, with eagerness they watch for the first appearance of results. And then Time enters in. There is evidence of weeds; slugs and worms appear. Then comes the clear call for the two great virtues of the sower who will win a harvest—Labor and Patience. He must cultivate the soil, else only the meager harvest can be his. The art of cultivation is the one so many would-be harvesters fail to learn. ”

“ When the harvest has been gathered from our strong, true land, a growth comes on which late in the year causes the earth to regain somewhat of its old greenness. New blades spring up in the stubble of the wheat; the beeless clover runs and blossoms; far and wide over the meadows flows the tufted billows of the grass; and in the woods the oak-tree drops the purple and brown of his leaf and mast upon the verdure of June. Everywhere a second spring puts forth between summer gone and winter nearing. It is the overflow of plenty beyond the filling of the barns. ”

“ It sprouts and grows, and by and by he reaps the harvest [139] of the sowing, and he says, “I have harvested, I have raised so many bushels of corn to the acre.” Oh, no, he has not. He has sown so many seeds, he has cultivated so many acres, he has put in his sickle or his harvesting machine, and he has gathered so many stalks. But he could not have done it if some forces of nature had not been at work perfecting that which he began. He and nature, as we say—he and God, as I say—have worked together to raise the harvest. ”

“ Whom shall we call first? It shall be wheat, let us say, a plant with tastes hard to please, but one that in return gives us bread. So wheat is sown. In this soil, full of all sorts of good things, it cannot fail to thrive, however unfavorable the season may be. It will select what suits it best and leave the rest.
“Now that is done. The harvest is in, and it handsomely comes up to our hopes. The wheat has converted into magnificent grain the fertilizer put into the ground. Out of decay it has created nourishment. ”

“ Heat, cold, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.
And yielding to his needs, this honest sod,
Brown as the hand that tills it, moist with rain,
Teeming with ripe fulfilment, true as God,
With fostering richness, mothers every grain. ”

“ And the Master of the Harvest walked out by his cornfields, his face darker than ever. And he railed against the rain because it would not cease; against the sun because it would not shine; against the wheat because it might perish before the harvest.
"But why does he always and only complain?" moaned the corn plants, as the new terror was breathed over the field. "Have we not done our best from the first? ”

“ The soil, too, is fitted by the influences of every sky for the production of every harvest that can bring food, comfort, wealth, and luxury to man. Every family of the grasses, every cereal that can strengthen the heart, every fruit that can delight the taste, every fibre that can be woven into raiment or persuaded into the thousand shapes of human necessity, asks but a gentle solicitation to pour its abundance bounteously into the bosom of the husbandman. ”

“ Here and there we pass on the road a busy harvest scene, the people turning round at the sound of approaching wheels to watch the travellers pass. It is the farmer himself that gazes at us, half amused; the time for harvest is short on these rainy hills, and so master and man, and every available help, work early and late to get in the crops. The sun that shines so brilliantly to-day, and lights up the harvest field with a golden glow, will disappear in a few hours, and the fields may be a wreck from the wind and rain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the harvest time is, all worries have passed. When the harvest time is, all doubts, droughts, fears and tears are no more. When the golden grain falls upon the canvas; when the meadow larks, the robins and all the birds of the land sing the song of harvest time, the farmer is happy, is gay, and confident. ”

“ Farming was confined to the sandy soil in the stream bottom land. All farming was a man’s job except the harvest when women helped. A two-handed planting stick was used. Corn was eaten green, roasted or dried and shelled by women. ”

“ In order that there may be a good harvest, the land must be manured and carefully prepared, the seed must be sown in due season, the weeds which spring up must be rooted out, and the soil must be diligently cultivated throughout. ”

“ The husbandman has in the course of years, by drainage and manuring, to bring his ground into a fertile state; in the autumn he must plough, harrow, and sow, for his next year's crop; must subsequently hoe and weed, keep out cattle, and scare away birds; when harvest comes, must adapt the mode and time of getting in his produce to the weather and the labour market ”

“ Every fruit-bearing branch, therefore, he purges, that it may bring forth more fruit. The successful farmer carefully removes all the foreign growth out of his field, and then cultivates his plants, that he may reap the greatest possible harvest. ”

“ In the morning early folk arose; and the lads and women who were not of the night-shift got them ready to go to the mead and the acres; for the sunshine had been plenty these last days and the wheat was done blossoming, and all must be got ready for harvest. ”

“ The golden harvest-tide is here, the corn Bows its proud tops beneath the reaper's hand. Ripe orchards' plenteous yields enrich the land; Bring the first fruits and offer them this morn, With the stored sweetness of all summer hours, The amber honey sucked from myriad flowers, And sacrifice your best first fruits to-day, With fainting hearts and hands forespent with toil, Offer the mellow harvest's splendid spoil, To Him who gives and Him who takes away. ”

“ When we are tired and discouraged, and wonder if harvest time will never come, we go to some of the pleasant homes where great changes have been wrought. We point to a scholar and tell her past history, and then thank God that the seed sown found a lodging place and good soil. ”

“ Hence the farmer who most frequently stirs his soil in the growing season, and especially in seasons of drought, reaps, other things being equal, a more abundant harvest than if tillage were neglected. ”

“ If I'd taken his advice, Janet, I should have been just cleaned out!"
"What's the good of being economical when one's going to be married!" said Ellesborough, joyously. "Why—"
Rachel interrupted him—with a hand on his shoulder.
"And we've settled our plans, Janet—that is, if you're agreeable. Will you mind looking after the farm for six months?"
"You see, if the armistice is signed—and we shall know to-morrow," said Ellesborough, "I shall be free in a month or so, and then we propose to marry and get a passage before Christmas. I must go home, and she says she'll come with me!" ”

“ For ignorant people suppose that by mimicking the effect which they desire to produce they actually help to produce it; thus by sprinkling water they make rain, by lighting a fire they make sunshine, and so on. Similarly, by mimicking the growth of crops they hope to ensure a good harvest. The rapid growth of the wheat and barley in the gardens of Adonis was intended to make the corn shoot up; and the throwing of the gardens and of the images into the water was a charm to secure a due supply of fertilising rain. ”

“ If, after having toiled and sown, we had nothing to do but to gather in the harvest, every person would become an agriculturist. But a soil which is not manured will soon grow exhausted; and if it be neither ploughed nor harrowed, instead of barley or vegetables, it will soon be covered with tares; rank weeds will flourish in every field. ”

“ 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. ”