then brought the corn
planting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of the
crops gave time for incidentals again. Corn and hay were now harvested, the
roads and premises put in order, the cordwood hauled from the swamp, the
coal unladen from the barges, and all things made ready for the rush of
the grinding season which began in late October. 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.

[Footnote 18: These processes of matlaying and windrowing are described in
L. Bouchereau, _Statement of the Sugar and Rice Crops made in Louisiana in
1870-71_ (New Orleans, 1871), p. xii.]

Another typical sugar estate was that of Dr. John P.R. Stone, comprising
the two neighboring though not adjacent plantations called Evergreen and
Residence, on the right bank of the Mississippi in Iberville Parish. The
proprietor's diary is much like Aime's as regards the major crop routine
but is fuller in its mention of minor operations. These included the
mending and heightening of the levee in spring, the cutting of staves,
the shaving of hoops and the making of hogsheads in summer, and, in their
fitting interims, the making of bricks, the sawing of lumber, enlarging
old buildings, erecting new ones, whitewashing, ditchi