Maize field

“ All through the summer months, the maize-fields are beautiful with their long glossy leaves; but when ripe, dry and colorless, they will not compare with the waving lawns of other grains. The golden ears, however, after the husk has been taken off, are perhaps the noblest heads of grain in the world; the rich piles now lying about the fields are a sight to rejoice the farmer's heart. ”

“ In the surrounding field were patches of growing maize, wheat, potatoes, and some of the common table vegetables; the hay crop for the winter sustenance of the only cow and yoke of oxen, the best friends of the new settler, having been just cut and stored in an adjoining log-building, as was evident from the fresh look of the stubble, and the stray straws hanging to the slivered stumps on bushes in the field, and from the fragrant and far-scenting locks protruding from the upper and lower windows of the well-crammed receptacle passing under the name of barn. ”

“ The Mandans and Manitaries cultivate very fine maize, without ever manuring the ground; but their fields are on the low banks of the river, sufficiently sheltered by eminences, where the soil is particularly fruitful. When, after many years, the field is exhausted, they let it lie fallow, and cultivate another spot, since these extensive wildernesses offer them inexhaustible resources. ”

“ In another direction, again, lies a field of new land, ploughed and seeded for the first time within the last few weeks; the young maize plants, just shooting out their glossy leaves, are the first crop ever raised there, and when harvested, the grain will prove the first fruits the earth has ever yielded to man from that soil, after lying fallow for thousands of seasons. ”

“ When the maize-thieves, crows, or other birds, pick up or pluck out the grains of maize, their heads grow delirious, and they fall, which so frightens the rest that they never venture on the field again; when those which have tasted the grains recover, they leave the field, and are no more tempted to visit it again. By thus preparing maize, one must be very careful that no other creatures touch it; for when ducks or fowls eat a grain or two of the maize which is thus steeped, they become very sick ”

“ Maize, pumpkins, and beans grow together in a field—a triple crop. Nature perfects them all, yet must do more. Scarce have the ploughs left the furrows before there springs up a varied wild growth, and a fourth crop, morning-glories, festoon the tall [21] [22] [23] tassels of the Indian corn ere the knife can be laid against the stalk. Harvest fields usually have their stubble well hidden by a rich, deep aftermath. Garden patches, for all that hoe and rake can do, commonly look at last like spots given over to weeds and grasses. Sidewalks quickly lose their borders. ”

“ Sweet corn is adapted to any soil suitable for field corn, though more attention is given to manuring. A warm, rich, sandy loam is considered most desirable. On the northern limits of the corn belt sweet corn is grown as a field crop because of its rapid growing and early maturing habits. ”

“ Nature has girded on her robe of green, and by the touch of her magical wand, has toned down its rough features to an almost delicate softness. The young maize—planted in a soil that has lain fallow, perhaps for a thousand years—is rapidly culming upward; and the rich sheen of the long lance-like leaves, as they bend gracefully over, hides from view the sombre hues of the earth. The forest trees appear with their foliage freshly expanded—some; as the tulip-tree, the dogwood, and the white magnolia, already in the act of inflorescence. ”

“ Buckwheat crops, in white and fragrant bloom, are lying on half the farms; the long leaves of the maize are still brilliantly green, and its yellow flowers unblighted; late oat-fields here and there show their own pallid green beside recently-cut stubble, which still preserves the golden color of the ripe wheat. In several meadows of the valley mowers were busy, hay-cocks stood about the fields, and loaded carts were moving about, carrying one back to the labors of midsummer, but these
were doubtless crops of seed grass, timothy and clover, and not hay for fodder. ”

“ Summer is past its height. The songless bobolink has forsaken the shorn meadow. Grain fields, save the battalioned maize, have fallen from gracefulness and beauty of bending heads and ripple of mimic waves to bristling acres of stubble. From the thriftless borders of ripening weeds busy flocks of yellowbirds in faded plumage scatter in sudden flight at one's approach like upblown flurries of dun leaves. ”

“ They sow as much hemp and flax here, as they want for home consumption.
They sow maize in great abundance: A loose soil is reckoned the best for this purpose; for it will not grow in clay. From half a bushel they reap a hundred bushels. They reckon maize a very good kind of corn, because the shoot recovers after being hurt by the frost. They have had examples here of the shoots dying twice in spring, to the very ground, and yet they shot up again afterwards, and afforded an excellent crop. Maize has likewise the advantage of standing much longer against a drought, than wheat. ”

“ Now the wood-cutters set to work and replenish the store of beech-trunks in the shed; now the carts come down from the moors, piled with an aromatic load of broom-twigs neatly tied in faggots; now the heather is cut; now the leaves are piled in sacks, to furnish fodder all the winter long. The first-sown corn is already green above the sod, and still, day after day, the plough is in the field, while on the steeper hills the oxen draw a mere curved tooth of wood—the Roman aratro, our araire. The cattle still browse the meadows; all night the hillsides are melodious with their chiming bells. ”

“ To this end they levelled and cleared it of rocks and stones, made gardens and covered them over with good earth and manure brought from afar, and thereby made the ground capable of producing maize, which, by reason of its elevation and its consequent coldness of climate, would not grow in the country adjacent. ”

“ The women, in the beginning of summer, after having burnt the stubble of the preceding crop, rudely stir the ground with a long crooked piece of wood; they then throw in grain, which is chiefly the coarse but productive species of maize peculiar to the continent. ”

“ They are noticeable features of every landscape, and some of them are romantic-looking buildings, with a cross at one gable and a pinnacle at the other. In the autumn the granaries are filled with the maize which has been gathered from the fields and stripped and dried in the sun. On village pavements, in fields, on the beach, and in all sorts of odd corners the cereal is spread out to dry, and makes glorious golden patches in the sunshine. Women, helped by children, prepare the maize for grinding into flour. ”

“ The farm grows almost all the necessaries of our table. Our soil is too poor for wheat, but rye and buckwheat flourish on the mountain-sides; whole slopes and ledges, too dry for hay, are a garden of tall, crisp, white flowers, where the buckwheat (sarrazin) waves through August until mid-September. A little before Michaelmas the flowers die, the seed turns gradually black, the stems coral-red; and then the farm-hands come and reap the harvest, bringing great sheets of linen, which they spread in the field, and thrash thereon the grain with high-dancing flails. ”

“ I have now two acres of wheat,—of oats, and nearly an acre in garden under turnips, cabbages, rape, potatoes, carrots, borecole, radishes, spinach, peas, lettuces, mustard, onions, tomatos, and almonds, and hope to have another acre of wheat and one of barley, besides some portion under maize and millet, at an expense of 3l. per acre for breaking up the land with hired teams, but more probably I shall substitute my own young cattle. ”

“ The soil is excessively rich, and the people, although isolated by old feuds that are never settled, cultivate largely. They have selected a kind of maize that bends its fruit-stalk round into a hook, and hedges some eighteen feet high are made by inserting poles, which sprout like Robinson Crusoe's hedge, and never decay. Lines of climbing plants are tied so as to go along from pole to pole, and the maize cobs are suspended to these by their own hooked fruit-stalk. ”

“ In the afternoons and evenings, we took breezy gallops through the forests, along the boundary sward of the fields, across the rich black soil of that third of the land which, in the "three-field" system of cultivation, is allowed to lie fallow after it has borne a crop of winter grain, rye, and one of summer grain, oats. ”

“ I observe in the magazines and almanacs, that in the rotations, a crop of turnips, ruta-baga, or other green plants, is generally put down as one part of the course; but I have nowhere seen more than the margins or edges of the maize, or other grain, devoted to the green crop, properly so called. The attention of the farmers seems chiefly directed to the raising enough of maize for home consumption, and of wheat for sale ”

“ Maize is the best crop to grow on unbroken land, and to plant it he will have to hoe patches here and there all over the ground, keeping them as well as he can in line, make them raised somewhat like little hillocks, and plant three or four grains in each, this crop will loosen the ground for the plough. And while it is growing he may as well build his fowl house. Poultry will do no harm to the corn once it is well above ground, and by the time he has other crops in he must have a closer fence to keep out other animals than fowls, if his farm is to be for general stock. ”

“ When due regard is paid to the selection of varieties, and cultivated in a proper soil, maize may be accounted a sure crop in almost every portion of the habitable globe, between the 44th degree of north latitude and a corresponding parallel south. Among the objects of culture in the United States, it takes precedence in the scale of cereal crops, as it is best adapted to the soil and climate, and furnishes the largest amount of nutritive food. ”

“ It is quite a labour to detach these leaves from the ear, when thousands of bushels of the corn are gathered and heaped together. For this purpose, however, and in the western country more especially, several neighbouring families join alternately at each other's plantations, and assist in clearing away the husks, thus preparing the maize for the market or for domestic use. ”

“ It is a fine thing to see the cattle turned for the first time in spring into the green meadows. It is a fine thing—one of the finest of all—to see and smell the rain in a corn-field after weeks of drought. How it comes softly out of gray skies, the first drops throwing up spatters of dust and losing themselves in the dry soil. Then the clouds sweep forward up the valley, darkening the meadows and blotting out the hills, and then there is the whispering of the rain as it first sweeps across the corn-field. ”

“ Our road lay through a lane formed by a cart-track, between fields of Indian corn just beginning to flower—as it is called technically, to “tassel”—and sugar-cane. There were stalks of the former twelve or fifteen feet in height, with three or four ears each, round which the pea twined in leafy masses. The maize affords food to [392] the negro, and the husks are eaten by the horses and mules, which also fatten on the peas in rolling time.
The wealth of the land is inexhaustible: all the soil requires is an alternation of maize and cane ”

“ But a corn crop is often put in to act as a cleanser of the soil when it has become foul. This end can only be answered by a rigid persecution and destruction of the weeds throughout the whole growing season. Some farmers, strangely enough, will deal thoroughly with their fields, but allow the edges and fence rows to swarm with weeds that luxuriate and ripen seed which the winds scatter all over the field. This is as if a man should busy himself all day long, in driving hogs out of his field, but leave all the holes open where they broke in. ”

“ One of the most beautiful, and at the same time useful, crops in the world is that of maize, which feeds not only vast numbers of human beings, but also countless flocks and herds, the latter eating the green stalks as well as the ripened grain. The United States alone produced no less than 2,523,648,312 bushels of this cereal in 1902, as against 987,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 670,000,000 [326] bushels of barley. Now, maize has a very tough stalk, often 10 feet high and an inch thick, which cannot be cut with the ease of wheat or barley. So a special machine has been devised to handle it. ”

“ The harvests, pale in the north, here wave with a reflex of reddish gold. A warmer sun makes the vigorous verdure shine more richly; the stalks of maize spring from the earth like discharges of rockets, and their strong, wrinkled leaves fall over in plumes; such burning rays are needed to urge the sap through those gross fibres and gild the massy spike. ”

“ In some seasons it would here and there ripen seeds, and in all cases one could gather a few heads of “green corn.” In warmer countries it is always best to sow maize in the open ground as soon as the frost permits; but in England it is better to raise it on a gentle hotbed in April, although occasionally it will succeed if sown out of doors. Gradually harden off the plants before they have made more than three or four little leaves, keeping them in a cool frame very near the glass, so as to keep them sturdy, and finally exposing them in the same position by taking the lights quite off. ”

“ Others cut the whole crop at once, gathering the ears first, then cutting the stalks and leaving them to stand in sheaves about the fields for a few days. The maize harvest is usually several weeks going on, as some farmers are much earlier with the task than others. ”