Henry’s Harvest Life
Written by: Brooke King
Inspired by “The Honorable Harvest” in Braiding Sweetgrass
Summary
Henry is a boy who likes to harvest. Henry grew up on a farm, living with a father who was a farmer. Henry’s father never let him help with farming, but could always use an extra hand when it came to harvesting. Henry’s favorite thing to harvest was sweet corn.
Keywords: harvest, farmers, corn
Henry grew up harvesting. For those of you who may not know, harvesting is when crops are gathered from the field.
Henry’s father was a farmer. He planted and grew all sorts of vegetables. Henry’s favorite vegetable was corn.
Henry was never able to help his father out much in the fields, but harvesting the corn was one thing Henry was able to do and couldn’t wait for each year.
There’s a lot to know about picking corn. At harvest time, the silk turns brown, but the husks are still green on the corn.
Once Henry’s father determined that it was time for the corn to be harvested, Henry would wake up at 4:30 in the morning for multiple weeks in order to make it out to the field in time.
The early morning was the best time for Henry to pick the corn because the corn is still cool and dew-covered from the night before. Plus, it’s a lot cooler in the early morning!
If Henry were to wait and go out into the field in the afternoon, the corn would be wilted and a lot harder to pick.
Once harvesting of the corn is all completed for the season, Henry gets to work at the corn stand with his older brother Bill. Henry loves doing this because the customers are always so eager to buy!
Even though Henry isn’t able to help his father out much with farming, he really enjoys being able to help out with harvesting the corn. Maybe one day Henry will grow up to be a farmer like his father and have a son to help him harvest!
