Cereal Farming 
45 
for rain, while the boy prays that it will be clear. When at last the 
hot winds stop blowing and the rain falls, the farmer's satisfaction is 
mingled with the fear that the rain may turn to hail. 
If good fortune smiles on the wheat farmer, the stems grow rapidly, 
and in time the wheat ¢ heads out” ; that is, the seeds begin to form 
in the heads. Now if rust does not appear upon the stems or smut 
among the seed, the crop will be big—a ‘bumper crop,” the farmer 
would say. Nearly all the dangers have been passed. Under the 
hot sun the field changes slowly from green to lighter hues until the 
golden yellow shows that it is ready to harvest. 
The farmer enjoys one other scene even more than the field of rip- 
ened wheat. That he sees after the crop has been cut and the seed 
threshed out of the heads. He takes his way to the nearest railroad, 
driving a wagon loaded with wheat and leading a second wagon, 
while his sons and hired men may follow in the same way. The 
wheat procession is repeated many times, for the farmer has not 
enough wagons, horses, and men to take all the big harvest at once. 
This procession means the end of his worries and the reward for all 
his work, provided he is sure that he can sell at a good price. 
How machinery does the work on a wheat farm. Methods of 
planting, harvesting, and threshing wheat are nowhere more ad- 
F'16. 30. The use of power-driven machinery in farming is not yet a hundred years old. It has 
made possible the production of huge crops on wide stretches of new land. This combination 
harvester, run by eight men, cuts, threshes, winnows, and sacks 120 acres a day. By the old 
hand methods, the most expert reaper could cut only 3 to 4 acres a day, and often the grain was 
spoiled by rain before it could be gathered into stacks or carried to the barn for threshing