to curl your hair

[keannu]

1.Is this an idiom to mean "very frightening"?
2. Does this "do a row" mean "plant a seed along a row"?
st138)The old man had got a hand corn-planter out of the barn and his wife had got a bag of seed corn, and there, in the moonlight, that night, after they got the news of their son's death, they were planting corn. It was a thing to curl your hair ─ it was so ghostly. ... They were both in their nightgowns. They would do a row across the field, coming quite close to us as we stood in the shadow of the barn,

 

[probus]

Yes and no. Something that can curl your hair is extremely shocking, horrifying or frightening. This is an idiom.

To do a row here is to plant a whole row, not just a single seed in the row.