On a Wheat Farm.
Many of the children of the prairies live on farms where wheat is raised. As the sun shines down on the broad fields, the tiny grains sprout and grow with astonishing quickness. Then, when the heavy dews fall at night and the earth cools, they get new strength for the next day, so that the farmers gather abundant crops.
As the summer days pass by and the wheat ripens, the children in the big farm house get ready for an exciting time. Their mother makes dozens of pies and loaves of bread and cake. A cow and perhaps a hog or two, are killed and cut up, for an extra number of “hired hands” begin to arrive. The farmer himself is unusually busy. Big machines and engines are brought out from the barns to be cleaned and oiled, for the wheat is about to be harvested.
How They Harvest Wheat on the Prairies.
It is interesting to watch the work go on in the fields, it is so different from that of the old days before the threshing and binding machines were invented. It seems almost like magic to the watching children as acre after acre of waving grain is cut down, bound into sheaves and threshed, almost in the “twinkling of an eye.”
Then away it is whisked in big wagons to the flour mills in the town near by from which it is sent far and wide to be made into delicious bread for hungry boys and girls.