In the first phase of
harvesting the main gang cut and stripped the canes, the carters and the
railroad crew hauled them to the mill, and double shifts there kept up the
grinding and boiling by day and by night. As long as the weather continued
temperate the mill set the pace for the cutters. But when frost grew
imminent every hand who could wield a knife was sent to the fields to cut
the still standing stalks and secure them against freezing. For the first
few days of this phase, the stalks as fast as cut were laid, in their
leaves, in great mats with the tops turned south to prevent the entrance
of north winds, with the leaves of each layer covering the butts of that
below, and with a blanket of earth over the last butts in the mat. Here
these canes usually stayed until January when they were stripped and strewn
in the furrows of the newly plowed "stubble" field as the seed of a new
crop. After enough seed cane were "mat-layed," the rest of the cut was
merely laid lengthwise in the adjacent furrows to await cartage to the
mill.[18] In the last phase of the harvest, which followed this work of the
greatest emergency, these "windrowed" canes were stripped and hauled, with
the mill setting the pace again, until the grinding was ended, generally in
December.
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