Between Whiles by Helen Hunt Jackson

It was long past dusk of an August evening. Farmer Weitbreck stood leaning on the big gate of his barnyard, looking first up and then down the road. He was chewing a straw, and his face wore an expression of deep perplexity. These were troublous times in Lancaster County. Never before had the farmers been so put to it for farm service; harvest-time had come, and instead of the stream of laborers seeking employment, which usually at this season set in as regularly as river freshets in spring, it was this year almost impossible to hire any one.

The explanation of this nobody knew or could divine; but the fact was indisputable, and the farmers were in dismay, -- nobody more so than Farmer Weitbreck, who had miles of bottom-lands, in grain of one sort and another, all yellow and nodding, and ready for the sickle, and nobody but himself and his son John to swing scythe, sickle, or flail on the place.