The Martyr on the Land by Arthur Gask

Yet again, if the reaping of the ripened crop be retarded by days of continuous rain--as, indeed, has happened in many districts this year--the grain will become bleached, and, with the gluten washed out, of much poorer quality. Sometimes, even a total loss may follow by the grain starting to grow in the heads. Also, the winds may so flatten down the stalks that up to 50 per cent. of the crop may not be able to be gathered in the harvester. Much of the grain, too, may then have been shaken out, and, as we have seen in the case of oats, the whole of the crop may thus be lost.

Despite all this, I have by no means exhausted the hazards of a farmer's calling or the misfortunes that are continually befalling him. This year, in particular, has been a most unhappy one. Owing to the drought, there was no green feed for stock right up to the end of the winter; and, although a farmer might hand-feed his sheep with the wheat that he could so ill spare, many of the ewes became so weak that when they dropped their lambs they had no milk for them, and, in consequence, morning after morning, the paddocks were strewn with the bodies of the dead. Then, after the drought, came the plague of grasshoppers; and, in those districts where they arrived too late to ruin all the crops, they stripped bare the precious lucern and played havoc with the other kinds of feed, so that today in many places the farmers have already had to draw upon their winter stores of hay.