A Double Crop
Our English farmers have been exulting in rare yields of pure bred wheats, even up to eight quarters of Yeoman or Little Joss ; but they will hardly rival the very small holder of Connemara or Donegal, for he gathers two harvests in one. A field, being cut carefully with the sickle, is as green as it is yellow ; for the grassy weeds are as numerous as the straws. As each sheaf is cut, the reaper carefully separates the tares from the corn. The green sheaves are piled in one heap, the yellow in another ; and thus the tilled field yields both a corn crop and a hay crop simultaneously. In Goldsmith's phrase, it may be true that " Half a tillage mocks the smiling plain,'" but it is not a dimidiata seges, for the crop is not half but double ! In such places agricultural depression when it comes is almost wholly a result of bad seasons, as in the old days. The money earnings are infinitely small, and the first function of the holding is to find food and fodder for the farmer's family and his stock.
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