I harvested my first crop of grain in 1977. People gave up and started cutting their green oats for hay in July instead of waiting until late August to combine them for grain. Several wet summers in a row made it impossible to harvest a decent crop. Oats as a grain crop began to fall out of favor in the late 1960s. The wood would suck the moisture out of the oats and then be extracted. The common remedy to this problem was to jam as many dry wooden fence posts into the pile of grain as possible. If the crop was harvested and put away on the moist side, the oats could begin to heat and spoil. Farm-raised oats were stored in makeshift wooden bins in the corners of a hayloft. It must have been about 1936.”Īnother old gentleman, Hall Buzzell of Derby, recounted tales of traveling the Orleans County countryside doing custom work with his two International Harvester Model 64 pull-type combines in the ’50s and ’60s. “I remember reaping and stooking a fine crop of oats there when I was a kid. “See that pine woods down there beside your lower pasture,” my neighbor Sam Pion told me. In my ramblings around Vermont and southern Québec in the 1970s I met many older farmers who told me stories about growing oats. Of all the cereal grains, none grows better in northern New England than oats.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |