Read "The Martyr on the Land" by Arthur Gask online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
-"While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest shall not cease," says Holy Writ; but that surely does not apply to the farmer in Australia. Seed-time, if you like. Seed-time with all the long days of heavy and patient toil that precede it: the ploughing, the harrowing, the cultivating and the cultivating again, but the harvest--ah, that is quite a different matter. The farmer is never certain, until the grain is actually in his barn, that there is going to be any harvest at all.
On that morning of December 17, a farmer near me was reaping a small crop of seven acres of oats that he sows every year as feed for his horses. His normal harvest from this little patch is 70 bags. The first time he went round with the harvester, he got two bags; then up came the wind, and he had to go round ten times to obtain the next two bags. In all, that day he harvested 10 bags of oats instead of the usual 70.