Even then, dinner is carried to the workers
in the field, because they are often a mile or two from the dining-hall.
The height of the harvest season is at the end of July.
In the autumn, after the wheat has been harvested, the straw is burned and
the land is ploughed. In the following April when the soil is dry enough
to harrow, the seeds, after being carefully selected and thoroughly
cleaned, are planted. For the harvesting a great deal of new machinery is
purchased every year. One of these huge machines can cut and stack in one
day the grain from a hundred acres of land. Then the grain is threshed at
once in the field, before the rain can do it harm.
[Illustration: Grain-Elevators at Buffalo.]
Through the spout of the thresher the grain falls into the box wagon,
which carries it to the grain-elevator, or building for storing grain.
Here it remains until it is loaded automatically into the cars, which take
it to the great elevator centres. The wheat is not touched by hands from
the time it passes into the thresher until it reaches private kitchens in
the form of flour.
The great elevator centres are Duluth, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago, and
Buffalo.
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