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.