The Stack-yard.
“And you build the sheaves into great stacks there?” said Tom.
“Yes, it is kept in stacks until we are ready to thresh it. You must all come over to the farm and see it being threshed into grain and straw some day.”
“But why do you build it into stacks?” asked Frank.
“So that we may keep it through the winter, and thresh a stack at a time as we need it,” the man replied. “It is threshed by passing it through a mill. At our farm the mill is turned by horses. At some farms there are mills turned by a great water-wheel. Sometimes a steam-engine comes and threshes the whole crop in the fields.”
“And what do you do with it when it is threshed?” Dolly asked.
“When the corn is passed through the mill, it is so shaken up that all the grain is removed from the stalks. The grain comes out at one side of the mill and falls into sacks. The straw is tossed out at another part. We use the straw for bedding for horses and cows, and some kinds of straw we use for feeding them. The grain goes to the miller, who grinds it into flour. The flour goes to the baker, who bakes it into bread.”
“Come along, boys!” Uncle George shouted from the next field. “We are going over to the farmyard to see the stacks made.”
In the next field the farmer’s men were loading a waggon with sheaves of corn. The sheaves were caught up by long pitch-forks and tossed on to the waggon. Here a man put them into a great square load. When this was done, the men lifted Dolly up, and she rode up to the farmyard on the top of the great load of sheaves.