United States or Wallis and Futuna ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There is nothing to be seen but stooks and that thin telephone wire running like a line in the sky in the far distance.
On the crag-top above the town the corn had been cut, and harvesters were busy laying the sheaves together in stooks. The yellow fields shone in the afternoon light as if the hill were crowned with gold.
Part of the great field was already stripped to a belt of tall stubble, though long ranks of stooks still stretched across the rest, and dusty men were hard at work among them. Wagons rolled through the crackling straw going slowly, piled high with rustling loads; returning light, jolting wildly, as fast as the teams could trot, for the thrashers were paid by the bushel and would brook no delay.
All kinds of images were rushing through his brain wide wheat fields with a blazing sun on the stooks a small frame house set nakedly on the flat prairie with a bit of untidy garden round it its living room in winter, with a huge fire, and a woman moving about the creek behind it, and himself taking horses down to water.
The sun was low in the sky when she stood there alone on the smooth field, with all the corn lying flat at her feet. Then she started binding. The air grew cooler. When the last sheaf was fastened in its straw-band and they now stood set up in heavy stooks, like black giants in straight rows, it began to grow dark.
At noon, when toil gladly made way for dinner, they all sat down among the stooks to eat and drink all except Grizzie, who, appropriating an oatcake the food she and Aggie had a right to between them, carried it home, and laid the greater part aside. Cosmo ate and drank with the rest of the labourers, and enjoyed the homely repast as much as any of them.
The land is so poor that a field hardly produces more grain than is needed for seed the following year, so the rye-growing is carried on merely for the straw, which is used for thatching. The stooks are carried to and from the threshing fields, piled on donkeys that one meets everywhere at this season, with their black, unbridled heads just visible beneath a pinnacle of golden straw.
A few of the fields were being reaped, one or two were crowded with stooks, while many crops of oats yet waved and rustled in various stages of vanishing green. On all sides kine were lowing; overhead rooks were cawing; the sun was nearing the west, and in the hollows a thin mist came steaming up.
But in our part, women do what seems their proper business, following well behind the men, out of harm of the swinging hook, and stooping with their breasts and arms up they catch the swathes of corn, where the reapers cast them, and tucking them together tightly with a wisp laid under them, this they fetch around and twist, with a knee to keep it close; and lo, there is a goodly sheaf, ready to set up in stooks!
The grouse I used to shoot in the evening while they fed amongst the corn stooks; for pheasants and hares, I used to get the other pupils to walk through the woods, while I with a gun walked outside. Scouts were posted to look out for keepers. Did our tutor know? Of course he knew. But think of the saving in the butcher's bill! Besides which, Mr.
Word Of The Day