Identifier: nativesofnorther00croo (find matches)
Title: Natives of northern India
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Crooke, William, 1848-1923
Subjects: Ethnology -- India India -- Social conditions India -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : A. Constable and Company, ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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in the spring. Sugar-cane, a most impor-tant and valuable crop, is sown in the spring, and cutand crushed after standing in the field for nearly ayear. The area of land which can be worked by a singlefamily and one pair of oxen varies greatly. To theeast of the United Provinces and in Behar, for instance,such a farm would contain four or five acres; but theaverage is greater where rice, which needs less plough-ing than other cereals, is in excess. Where the habitof growing two crops within the year prevails, the workof the farmer begins about July, when the autumncrops, millets, maize, or cotton, are sown. These needcontinuous weeding, and whenever the weather is openthe ploughing for the spring crop goes on. Meanwhile,as the rain crops ripen, they must be carefully watchedto save them from birds and other enemies, and theyare finally harvested after October, when the monsoonclears. Then the spring sowings begin, and as theygrow, irrigation from well, tank, or canal must go on. No. 18
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HOME LIFE 159 particularly if the welcome fall of rain about Christmastime should fail. By the beginning of March thewheat and barley are ripe, and the harvesting, thresh-ing, and storing of the grain occupy the next month ortwo. Thus the toil and anxieties of the farmer arecontinuous, and his only period of comparative rest isin the heavy rain time, when, as he says, the godVishnu goes to sleep, and does not wake till Octoberis well advanced and the time has come to begincutting and crushing the sugar-cane and boiling downthe juice. You may watch him in the working season as hestarts at sunrise, with his plough over his shoulder,and driving his pair of lean oxen before him. If workbe pressing, he and his hired men pass the day in thefields, eating at noon the simple meal which one of hislittle girls brings to him from the house. After a siestain the shade and a pipe he resumes his work, andreturns in the evening, the time of the cows dust, ashe calls it, when the cattle come home fro

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