[Footnote 5:  Carroll, Historical Collections of South Carolina, II, 202.]

[Footnote 6:  American Historical Association Report for 1903, p. 445.]

In spite of many variations in the details of cultivation, the tide-flow system led to a fairly general standard of routine.  After perhaps a preliminary breaking of the soil in the preceding fall, operations began in the early spring with smoothing the fields and trenching them with narrow hoes into shallow drills about three inches wide at the bottom and twelve or fourteen inches apart.  In these between March and May the seed rice was carefully strewn and the water at once let on for the “sprout flow.”  About a week later the land was drained and kept so until the plants appeared plentifully above ground.  Then a week of “point flow” was followed by a fortnight of dry culture in which the spaces between the rows were lightly hoed and the weeds amidst the rice pulled up.  Then came the “long flow” for two or three weeks, followed by more vigorous hoeing, and finally the “lay-by flow” extending for two or three months until the crop, then standing shoulder high and thick with bending heads, was ready for harvest.  The flowings served a triple purpose in checking the weeds and grass, stimulating the rice, and saving the delicate stalks from breakage and matting by storms.

A curious item in the routine just before the grain was ripe was the guarding of the crop from destruction by rice birds.  These bobolinks timed their southward migration so as to descend upon the fields in myriads when the grain was “in the milk.”  At that stage the birds, clinging to the stalks, could squeeze the substance from within each husk by pressure of the beak.  Negroes armed with guns were stationed about the fields with instructions to fire whenever a drove of the birds alighted nearby.  This fusillade checked but could not wholly prevent the bobolink ravages.  To keep the gunners from shattering the crop itself they were generally given charges of powder only; but sufficient shot was issued to enable the guards to kill enough birds for the daily consumption of the plantation.  When dressed and broiled they were such fat and toothsome morsels that in their season other sorts of meat were little used.

For the rice harvest, beginning early in September, as soon as a field was drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day’s drying.  Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief curing.  When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk.  In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the husk.  Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the “rice flour” and broken grain, and barreled for market.[7]