Grand Change Read Online Free

around August twenty-second the chill crept into the air and those crisp, clear days came. Soon the farmers began hauling out their binders, those senseless-looking humps of angles, cogs, rollers, canvas and rods, each with a cutting bar, a lever poking here and there and something resembling a riverboat paddlewheel. And they took flat sticks and packed that heavy black grease into grease cups among the works, on the side wheels and on that big, cleated wheel underneath at the centre of gravity, which bore nearly everything and everything ran off. And they inspected the canvas belt that rolled on its floor and the two smaller ones that rolled counter-wise and upright, then patched the tears and fray holes from last year’s work. And they gnashed the triangular cutting bar teeth against hand-cranked grindstones, grinding them into shape. On the next trip to town, they bought the cross-wound twine balls in tarpaper with an end sprigging from the centre hole.
    As the days grew steadily cooler and the yellow transparent apples began to ripen and the grain was rapidly turning from a green-yellow patchwork to gold, they walked through their stands amidst the pungent smells of mustard weed and floating thistledown. And they rubbed the grain kernels between their palms and looked at the sky, their minds mulling on when to start the harvest. With potato digging in close proximity, timing was crucial and the weather, always the weather. They consulted their almanacs. Some held to animal habits: dogs eating grass, bee behaviour, chicken antics. Some pondered on the moon. Some just went by chance like everybody else. Nothing was constant or totally predictable, except that there would be long, drawn-out drudgery ahead. And they steeled themselves as for a marathon.
    On his chosen day, a farmer fed his horses oats against the coming trudge and buckled on the messes of harness and hitched them to the binder’s double tree. The horses would be gimpy from pasture freedom since haying, but with terse commands and rein slaps they would run the binder into the field for the first pass.
    Then there was action in every corner, with the driver bouncing on the tail-like seat, one foot strapped to the sheaf carriage trip. With an eye to the horses, the rolling canvas, the paddlewheel sweeping grain into the cutting bar, the twine running through an eye here and there from the ball can to the knotter, the filling sheaf carriage for the trip at the windrow. And it didn’t hurt to look behind once in a while for loose sheaves or a cog or something that decided to take off on its own. With a hand to a lever to adjust for rough ground in rein juggle and an ear for alien sounds from the cutting bar, the packer, the kicker, the grain rushing through the works. If there was room left he could think about dinner. And there likely be would be stops, curses, kicks, skinned knuckles and a trench through the stubble from a jammed centre wheel.
    Eventually, the bugs would get worked out, the various components and actions would harmonize, the horses would fall into their rhythm, pulling as one. Around the field they went to the stutter of the cutting bar and the thwack of the kicker kicking out sheaves. Gradually, the ragged windrows would begin to lengthen.
    Looking insignificant in the theatres of the fields, with the constant rustle of the sheaves and the stubble underfoot, tucking sheaves under their arms, bending with a slight squat to set them head to head to form the stooks, the stookers worked, pausing now and then to bind a loose sheaf with a hand-knotted band of grain stalks. Their arms and chests chafed from the thistles and nettles packed in the sheaves. And if it was early morning, a dew would give strength to the chafing and their arms, pant legs and shirt fronts would be soaked. In time, the fields lay like golden brushes, spotted densely with the stooks, standing by their short shadows like so many miniature tents.
    Then, with