The Sandman: His Farm Stories

by William John Hopkins

And the sun had dried the stalks of wheat and the tassels. The tassels are a lot of little cases, on a fine stem; and in each little case is a grain of whole wheat. When the tassels are dry, the little cases are all ready to break open.

Then Uncle Solomon and Uncle John took their long forks and put the wheat in the cart, and when the cart was full the old oxen walked slowly back to the barn and in at the great doors.

There were great enormous doors in the side of the barn, big enough for a wagon to go through when it was piled up high with a load of hay or of wheat. And in the other side of the barn were other great enormous doors, so that the wagon could go right through the barn; and between the doors was only the great open floor with nothing on it. On one side of this open place were the cows, and on the other side were the horses and the oxen, and the cart went in between, with the wheat in it.

Then Uncle Solomon and Uncle John took the wheat out of the cart and put it on the floor of the barn; and the old oxen started again and walked out the other door and back to the wheat-field. Then Uncle Solomon and Uncle John filled the cart again and the oxen dragged that wheat to the barn; and they did the same way until all the wheat was on the barn floor. Then Uncle John took off the yoke and the old oxen went to their places and went to sleep.

The next morning Uncle Solomon and Uncle John went to the barn, and each took down from a nail a long smooth stick that had another smooth stick fastened to its end by a piece of leather so that it flapped about. This was to beat the wheat with, and they called it a flail.

And so Uncle Solomon and Uncle John stood in amidst the wheat on the barn floor and whacked it with the flails so that they made a great noise—whack! whack!—on the floor. And the little cases broke open and the grains of whole wheat fell out and dropped between the stalks to the barn floor. And the pieces of the broken cases blew out from the great barn doors; for the doors were open at both sides and the wind blew through. These broken pieces that blow away, they call chaff.

Then when Uncle Solomon and Uncle John had whacked for a long time, and they thought that all the whole wheat had come out of the cases, they hung up the flails and took their long forks and lifted up the stalks of the wheat and shook them so that all the grains of wheat might drop through; and they put the dried stalks of the wheat in a corner of the hay-loft above where the cows slept. These dried stalks they call straw, and they put it for the horses and the cows and the oxen to sleep on.

And when the straw was all put away, there was all the wheat on the floor; and they gathered it up and put it into bags. And they had enough to make whole wheat flour to last all winter, and to feed the chickens and every kind of a thing that they wanted to use wheat for, and there was enough to take some to market besides.