Farming for self sufficiency

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If you cut with a grass mower, either horse drawn or tractor drawn, you will have to go behind and tie the sheaves. A sheaf is a bundle of straw, grain all at one end, that you can comfortably hug, tied either with a tie of straw, or a piece of twine. The knot for tying with its own straw is made thus: take a handful of straw from the bundle, pass it round the sheaf, twist the ends together and tuck them under the tie itself.

The binder does this job for you. But do not expect two horses to pull a binder for long. It takes three big horses to pull a fair-sized binder and it is killing work. An acre of land will give you at least a ton (may give you two) of wheat. Do you need more than that? If you don't, cannot you spare a day or two to cut it with a scythe? A binder is a huge great cumbersome machine to cut an acre or two of corn a year with. Like shooting a gnat with an elephant rifle. The combine is out of the question unless you hire one. It then does your cutting, threshing and winnowing in one. But you have to dry the corn, and we will deal with that later.

Assuming you use any other method except a combine—you will be faced with a field-full of corn sheaves. As soon as you can, put them up into stooks or shocks— or traives —the name depending upon what part of the country you live in. You do this by picking up two sheaves, banging the butts of the sheaves hard into the ground to settle them, and rubbing their heads together. Thus they stand up. Put two more alongside them—then more until you have six or eight sheaves—making a sort of shed. Now if it rains they will get wet—but they will get dry again. If it blows a gale they will fall over and you will have to put them up again. Now if you live in a dryish area you can leave the corn in the stook for say three weeks. Then cart it and stack it in ricks, but see the chapter on barley (in the next issue of MOTHER) for 'mows'. For small fields a circular rick is best. Mark out a circle on the ground, lay a platform of brushwood (not old sheets of corrugated iron), build a base of sheaves with the butts of the outer ring of sheaves outwards, and build layer after layer, like this, keeping the rick level—not hollow in the middle by God—the outer lot of sheaves always sloping down outwards so as to cast the rain that blows into them, the walls leaning slightly outwards until you get to the eaves, then pull the layers in until, after a steeply-pitched roof, you come to a point.

Thatch this with long threshed straw, or reeds if you can get them. If you use threshed straw you must chuck a pile of straw onto the ground and wet it well. Then you pull it—drag handfuls out from the bottom. In its wet condition the handfuls will come out straight. Lay the handfuls in bundles. Get the bundles up to the eaves of your rick, lay them flat (say two inches thick), and pin them down with twine held down with 'brortches', which are sharpened sticks hammered in to the rick with a mallet. When you have done one complete circle do another, half on top of it but higher up. Go on like this until you get to the top. Then make a sort of cone of straw and tie its neck tight up above, and if you have the imagination and skill to fashion a corn dolly to go right at the top, and add a final flourish to the job, you will have something to be proud of.

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