← Today we begin the hay harvest. But there is another matter that must be attended to first." 🔊
← "Now, comrades," cried Snowball, throwing down the paint−brush, "to the hayfield! Let us make it a point of honour to get in the harvest more quickly than Jones and his men could do." 🔊
← The harvest is more important. Comrade Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few minutes. 🔊
← Forward, comrades! The hay is waiting." So the animals trooped down to the hayfield to begin the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it was noticed that the milk had disappeared. 🔊
← HOW they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their efforts were rewarded, for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had hoped. 🔊
← In the end they finished the harvest in two days' less time than it had usually taken Jones and his men. 🔊
← Moreover, it was the biggest harvest that the farm had ever seen. There was no wastage whatever; the hens and ducks with their sharp eyes had gathered up the very last stalk. 🔊
← They met with many difficulties−for instance, later in the year, when they harvested the corn, they had to tread it out in the ancient style and blow away the chaff with their breath, since the farm possessed no threshing machine−but the pigs with their cleverness and Boxer with his tremendous muscles always pulled them through. 🔊
← But everyone worked according to his capacity The hens and ducks, for instance, saved five bushels of corn at the harvest by gathering up the stray grains. 🔊
← It happened that Jessie and Bluebell had both whelped soon after the hay harvest, giving birth between them to nine sturdy puppies. 🔊
← Even so, it was found necessary to leave certain tasks undone. The harvest was a little less successful than in the previous year, and two fields which should have been sown with roots in the early summer were not sown because the ploughing had not been completed early enough. 🔊
← It was almost half built now. After the harvest there was a stretch of clear dry weather, and the animals toiled harder than ever, thinking it well worth while to plod to and fro all day with blocks of stone if by doing so they could raise the walls another foot. 🔊
← Boxer would even come out at nights and work for an hour or two on his own by the light of the harvest moon. 🔊
← They, too, were slaughtered. Then a goose came forward and confessed to having secreted six ears of corn during the last year's harvest and eaten them in the night. 🔊
← In the autumn, by a tremendous, exhausting effort−for the harvest had to be gathered at almost the same time−the windmill was finished. 🔊