Steam can even burst
cannon balls, so you see it can easily burst, or pop the corn.
"Then, as the kernel bursts it puffs out and quickly dries into queer
shapes by the heat of the fire. It is white because the inside of corn is
really white, though the outside husk looks rather yellow sometimes."
So part of Hal's pop corn crop made something nice to eat during the long
Winter evenings. But before those evenings came Hal and Mab had harvested
all the things in the garden, with the help of their father and mother,
Uncle Pennywait and Aunt Lolly.
"We must get in the pea and bean vines," said Daddy Blake when he saw what
a hard frost there had been. "Then we'll thresh them on the barn floor and
it will be time soon, Hal, to husk your corn and bring in Aunt Lolly's
pumpkins."
For about a dozen big yellow pumpkins were growing amid the stalks of
corn, and very pretty they looked in the cool, crisp mornings, when the
corn had turned brown from the frost.
Hal's father showed him how the farmers cut off a hill of the corn stalks,
close to the ground, stacking them up in a little pile called a "shock."
They were allowed to stand there until the wind and sun had dried the
husks on the corn.
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