Bread is invaluable in every person’s life. Thanks to this product, people survived, waging endless wars, the main purpose of which was the conquest of fertile lands. Songs, sayings, proverbs are composed about bread. No wonder folk wisdom says: “Bread is the head of everything,” emphasizing its paramount importance. How is bread grown? How to plant and care for crops, read the article.
Who grows crops?
In ancient times, peasants-farmers were engaged in this. Today, a person who grows bread is called a farmer. But this is a generalized name for a profession that does not actually exist, as well as universities and schools where you can get it. To get a useful product on the table, you need to work hard for people of different professions.
In this matter, all stages of the work of a well-coordinated team of agricultural workers are important:
- Breeders, through the efforts of which new varieties of grain crops are being bred.
- Agronomists who monitor the condition of land as well as seeds in the winter. People in this profession control the plowing of the land. According to numerous calculations, they determine the date of this procedure.
- Tractor drivers involved in plowing, harrowing and sowing seeds.
- Combiners, without which you can not do in the harvesting strada. These people in special machines - combines - mowing ears, threshing grain, which is poured into the body of the machine and taken away for current to dry.
- Drivers (drivers) delivering grain for current, and then to flour mills.
- Pilots working in civil aviation who control pests of crops.
Bread is the country's wealth. Farmers are engaged in its cultivation, but the most important figure in this is the land. Before the grain turns into a loaf of bread, people of many professions work. Currently, a farmer with a plow and a working horse has not existed for a long time. Many bread cultivation processes are performed by machines.
Grain growing
This category of agricultural plants includes oats, barley, wheat, rye. How is bread grown? In order for a useful product to always be on the table, you need to work hard for specialists in many professions. The cultivation of crops should be carried out, adhering to the following measures:
- It is necessary to carry out the basic and pre-sowing preparation of the soil.
- Make the necessary fertilizers.
- Prepare the seeds and sow them.
- Properly and regularly care for plants.
- Harvest in time, avoiding losses.
Sowing dates
Depending on the time of sowing, crops are winter and spring. Sowing of the first is carried out in the fall, spring - in the spring. When growing crops, it is very important to determine the dates when seeds can be planted in the soil. If these are winter crops, three to four shoots should form on the plants before the onset of winter cold. Therefore, you need to sow the seeds in the first decade of September, sometimes the end of August is chosen for this. Spring crops should be sowed, focusing on the condition of the soil. The optimal period is April, mid or end of the month.
Tillage
How is bread grown? Before sowing crops, you need to plow the land. Plant residues should not remain on its surface after harvesting last year. This is a very important agrotechnical measure, as a result of which the soil is not subjected to erosion and a lot of moisture is stored in it. Simultaneously with plowing, fertilizers are introduced into the soil. If spring crops will be grown on the field, in the spring harrowing of the soil is carried out, if winter crops are cultivated.
How to sow seeds?
Crops are planted in prepared soil. Planting material must be undamaged and meet the requirements of the standard. To avoid infection of the seeds, they are pickled. Winter crops are grown from last year's seeds. After sowing, planting material must be rolled in to make contact with the ground.
How to care?
To get a high yield, crops need to be regularly taken care of. To do this, the following activities should be carried out:
- Protect plants from disease and pest damage. For this, fields with grain crops are treated with chemical preparations.
- Time to remove weeds so that they do not drown out the crop plants. For this, herbicides are used.
- Feed cereals with formulations containing nitrogen.
Harvest Methods
This agricultural event for crops is carried out in two ways:
- Direct combining. This is the most efficient way to clean. It is carried out at a grain moisture of 14-17%, as well as in the case when 95% of all plants have reached maturity.
- Separate (two-phase) method. So the cleaning of weed and maturing at different times of the bread is carried out.
- The three-phase method, in which cereals are mowed into rolls, are selected from the whole field and transported to specially equipped rooms for further threshing. But this method is rarely used due to the lack of cars.
How was bread grown before?
Even during the Stone Age, people noticed that some plants have nutritious grains, which can also be stored for a long time. They were wild cereals : wheat, rye, barley. Primitive tribes settled next to such fields. Over time, people invented tools for cultivating the land, harvesting grain and processing it into flour.
How was bread grown in the old days? First they prepared the ground. This work was very hard. Most of the territory of Ancient Russia was covered with powerful, impenetrable forests. The peasants first uprooted trees, cleared the earth of powerful roots. The air necessary for plant life did not enter the caked soil. Revive the land could only be plowing. The peasants performed this work with a plow or roe deer, which they themselves made.
The plow appeared much later. It was intended for cutting the layers of the earth and its turning. After plowing, the soil was harrowed using a harrow, which was a log with long branches. All clods were broken, stones of large sizes were removed. The land was ready for use.
Sowing grain in the old days
The beginning of the year in Russia was considered spring. Depended on the sowing work, will the coming year be full or hungry. The seeds were stored very carefully so that they did not germinate before the set time. For more than one year, grain for planting has not been stored, otherwise it will not have the strength to germinate.
The peasants determined the sowing time according to national signs, observing natural phenomena. For example, if during the flood period the level of the first water was high, spring crops had to be sown early, if not, it was late.
The sowing day was considered the most responsible and solemn of the year. How is bread grown? The person who was the first to enter the field was determined. He was barefoot, wore a red or white shirt, and a box of seeds hung on his chest. He scattered them evenly, reciting a prayer. Rye was sown mainly, as it was more resistant to weather changes and cold weather.
Peasants engaged in sowing grain crops in the fall. Such cereals were called winter crops and sown before the onset of cold weather. Before winter, the plants had time to germinate. If the weather was warm for a long time, cattle were released into the winter field, which ate the sprouts, and the plants took root faster. Subsequently, the peasants relied on the loss of a large amount of snow, which was a shelter for crops. You can see how bread was grown in the pictures below. The illustrations for the poem by Mikhail Stelmakh "Stubble" presented harvest.
Harvest
Very responsible at times was the harvesting of bread. It was important to do this on time, and that the weather be good. The peasants determined the harvest date based on their observations. Grain for maturity was determined by the teeth: if it crunches, it means ripe.
Harvesting grain required a lot of labor, so this was done by the whole family. Not only adults entered the field. How bread is grown was not a secret for children. From early childhood they were accustomed to work. If the family could not cope with the work, the neighbors were called for help. Harvesting grain was not easy, but this work brought joy to people: the process was accompanied by playful songs. All work was carried out manually using sickles and braids.
Modern children, especially those whose parents are not engaged in agricultural labor, will be helped to learn how to grow bread and stories. They are written a lot. For example, "Three kalacha and one bagel." This work was written by Leo Tolstoy.
How was the grain threshed?
The harvest ended by mid-August. The ears connected in sheaves were taken away from the field for drying. For this we used:
- Ovin - was a farm building, which housed up to 500 sheaves. The construction consisted of a pit with a furnace without a pipe and an upper tier for storing sheaves.
- Riga is a building larger than a barn. She was equipped with an oven. Five thousand sheaves can be dried in it at the same time.
After the grain was dried, sheaves were transported to the threshing floor (a plot on the ground, fenced). Here it was stored, threshed. It was the hardest job. They hit the sheaves with a thresher until a single grain was left in the ears. Threshing was not always done immediately. This work could be done in the fall and even with the onset of the winter period. The threshed grain had to be screened. To do this, a man stood in the wind and ted him with a shovel. Then the grain was brought to the mill for grinding into flour, from which the housewives baked bread, which in Russia was always considered a treasure of the whole people. That is why in our country, bread is treated with respect and reverence.