THE WHEAT HARVEST When wheat begins to turn yellow, the time of harvest is near. The farmer dents a kernel with his thumb nail. If it does not burst, it is ready for the sickle. The best flour is made from wheat that is dead ripe when harvested. But it is not possible to get a large field cut at just the best time. So it is usual to begin the reaping before the grain is quite ripe, trusting to the after care to offset the disadvantages of cutting it under-ripe. If over ripe the standing grain is attacked by birds, the wind breaks the brittle stalks, and shells out the loose grain. Rainy weather fades the color of the kernels and sets them to sprouting. A few days' delay at harvest time may lose the farmer half the value of his entire wheat crop. In regions of little or no summer rain, the harvest hurry is not so great.
The first harvesting tool was the hand sickle, some form of knife that gathered and cut off a bundle of straws as they grew. Before the sickle was invented, the wheat was pulled up in handfuls as flax is pulled to-day. After the sickle came scythes, and then the "cradle," swung by both hands, and followed by a man who bound the grain. Expert cradlers cut three and four acres of wheat a day. Then came a procession of im proved machinery aimed to replace human muscle with some other power, used by a machine that does its work quicker and better than the man with the cradle.
Headers pushed through the grain, stripping the heads by means of a coarse comb set on the edge of a cart, were used in Gaul at the beginning of the Christian Era. The power was furnished by an ox hitched between shafts at the back of the cart. The driver raked the heads off of the knives into the cart. This machine was in use for cen turies. Then it was abandoned and forgotten for centuries more.
The publishing of an account of this machine, described by Pliny in 70 A. D., led to the inven
tion of the reaper with revolving reel; and finally came the combined reaper and harvester, based on the principles first employed in the crude Gallic header. Gradually the inventive genius of this country has improved the machinery de vised in England until now the wheat on the great farms is cut, threshed, and flung on the ground in tiers of sacks, ready for shipment, the grain not having been handled by men during the whole process.
One of these great "portable factories," used in California wheat fields, cuts a forty foot swath, is drawn by a traction engine, and its day's work is to cut, thresh, and sack the wheat from iao acres. It takes eight men to operate this combina tion harvester, at a cost of but thirty to fifty cents per acre. Since the price is about $7,5oo, these big harvesting outfits belong to wheat-raising on a mammoth scale.
The self-binder, drawn by several horses driven by one man, is seen harvesting small wheat fields. It is followed by helpers who shock the grain, to dry it before it is stacked. Threshing comes later, and the grain may wait for months before it leaves the granary for the mills.
The harvest of wheat in our own country has been described above. America is by no means the only wheat-growing country, though it is ahead of all others in the world. Russia is greatest rival. The smaller countries of Europe all grow wheat, many of them more than they need for home markets. India, Siberia, North and South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are all wheat-growing coun tries. Most of the wheat is raised in the northern hemisphere, and much is shipped thither from the southern wheat regions. Canada is becoming one of the greatest wheat countries of the world.