Part 10

This is the season of the pot-herb, the time when the winter-kept vegetables lose their flavour and hothouse products are too dear and too tasteless. Everybody hankers for something green, but how many take the trouble to get it? Nettles and sourdock are now at their best and only need to be picked. With the pioneers they were at once a medicine and a food, for the long winters, with no vegetables, often bred scurvy and other disorders, so that their first care in the early spring was to feed lustily on greens. Nettles are coarse and have a peculiar brackish taste and yet are not unpalatable. Sourdock, however, is as good as the best spinach, and the only trouble is to get enough of it to satisfy a hungry family. It is to be found chiefly in low spots or around old buildings. It is so good that if it were not a native weed it would be cultivated as a herb. In the good old days its root was an important part of spring bitters. By the way, does any one make spring bitters any more? They were usually made by an infusion of the roots of burdocks, sourdocks, wild cherry and willow twigs, and anything else that tasted bad enough to be considered worthy of a place in the brew. After this concoction had been allowed to ferment, it could be guaranteed to kill or cure. The last time I tasted old-fashioned spring bitters was in the home of a retired farmer who had gathered the ingredients in the Humber Valley. He gave me a hospitable dose, and, though I made my escape as soon as possible, I was sick all the way from North Toronto to twelve o'clock. People either do not need bitters any more or else they haven't the constitutions to stand them. The same applies to sulphur and molasses, of which I have not heard for many years, although it used to come as regularly as the spring. Although I am a stickler for old-time ways and things, I think I shall leave out all of the old spring dosing except the greens. An epicure would relish sourdock, and to-day I noticed some fresh green dandelions that will shortly be served as a salad. Even though the garden will not yield anything for weeks to come except blisters and backaches, there is plenty of good eating in the fields.

_April 22._--"I saw a chickadee to-day," said a retired farmer, "and it reminded me of us fellows who have given up farming and moved into town."

"How?"

"Well, you know the fellows that write nature articles for the papers say that every fall the chickadees go crazy for a while. The theory is that they once used to migrate, and when migration time comes round they feel the old impulse to go south, but not strong enough to make them travel. It just churns them up, and they hustle around crazy-like, and don't know what to do with themselves. The spring affects us fellows in the same way. When the time for seeding comes around we feel that there's something we ought to be doing, and it isn't here for us to do, so we loaf around, feeling as lonesome as a lot of motherless colts. If you don't believe it, just fool around town for a while and talk with some of the gang. They don't know what's ailing them, but I do."

Of course, he was right, but these retired farmers resemble the chickadees in still another respect. Their migrating to town is really the result of an outgrown impulse. There was some excuse for a man who "retired" when the farm represented nothing but hard work, loneliness, and complete isolation from the active world. It was then an entirely laudable ambition for a man to make money and move to town, where he could live with some degree of comfort and enjoy human companionship. But in the older parts of the country that day is past. Railroads, trolleys, and good roads have brought the farms as near to the life of things as the villages and towns were a few years ago. Many farmers nowadays get their mail daily; many get daily papers, and some have even gone so far as to have telephones. In fact, the farmer who is sufficiently "well off" to retire can get for himself on his farm much greater comforts than he can ever get on the back streets of any town or city, and at much less cost.

The question of cost is the one that gives the retired farmer the greatest surprise, and causes him the most trouble. But on this point let the man of experience speak:

"When I retired I thought I had everything figured out to perfection, and would end my days in peace and fatness; but I wasn't within a mile of the facts. I don't believe any one can figure out just what a farmer gets from his farm. To begin with, he gets most of his living--his potatoes, vegetables, eggs, milk, butter, meat, firewood, and such things; and he never thinks of them in the same way as he does when he has to pay money for them in town. Then, there are things he can do without and expenses he can dodge in the country that he can't avoid in town without getting a reputation for being mean. Not having lived the town life, he can't know about them in advance. That's why retired farmers are so often unpopular. People say they are against progress and can be counted on to vote against anything that's for the good of the town. Well, I guess that's about right. Things that are for the good of the town raise the taxes, and when one's income is at a dead level and the cost of living is going up every year one doesn't hanker for more expenses. With things going the way they are, there's many a retired farmer who has discovered that he has changed country prosperity for town poverty, and that doesn't make him feel generous and public-spirited."

"There's no place like the farm, after all!"

"O, ho! So you've got that notion in your head, have you? Well, let me tell you that if there is another living creature more forlorn, buncoed, and bedevilled than the retired farmer it is the city or town man who tries farming as a peaceful and easy way to spend his declining years. Talk about miscalculating! He is the one that has it down to a fine thing. The city man thinks that if he has a farm clear of debt, good stock, and up-to-date implements he'll not only be able to sit under his own vine and fig tree, but to make money. It's a pretty dream: but it's seldom true. What the city man leaves out of the calculation is work--the hard, back-breaking, never-ending work it takes to run a farm. And when it comes to doing things he usually has about as much sense as a disappointed Brahma hen that sets on a crockery door-knob and tries to hatch out reversible egg-cups. He thinks all he has to do is to plant and let nature do the rest. Well, nature does it. Nature puts ten times as much steam in weeds as she does in turnips, and it looks as if she'd rather see her potato bugs plump and thrifty than anything else on the farm. After a man has tried farming for a few years he finds that nature is less his friend than his enemy. The number of blights, bugs, worms, and caterpillars she has depending on her bounty is out of all reason. Nature, my son, needs more petting and coaxing than a woman to make her treat you half-decent, and it's ten to one she'll jilt you in the end. No, my son, the farm is no place for a man who isn't ready to get up at four o'clock in the morning and crow with the roosters, and then plug away all day and be thankful if he gets through with his chores by nine o'clock at night.

"Yes, I know, my middle name is Jeremiah, but if you don't believe me just have a look at some of these city farmers next market day. You'll know them by their untidy clothes. The first thing a city man thinks when he moves to the country is that he doesn't need to care how he dresses, and he doesn't. A respectable scarecrow wouldn't be seen with some of them. And they're just about as careless about everything else, though it is taking care of everything that makes it possible for a man to get along on a farm at all. But what's the use of my talking? If you've made up your mind to have a try at farming nothing I can say will stop you; but don't forget that I told you."

From which it appears that in the never-ending debate regarding "Country Life _versus_ City Life" much may be said on both sides--all of it bad. Even when eminent authorities are quoted the situation is not improved. Tolstoi assures us that "cities are places where humanity has commenced to rot," and Hawthorne put himself on record as believing that "the more a man turns over the clods the more like a clod his brain becomes." Thoreau considered country life ideal, because a man could provide for necessities with so little effort and have so much time for mental and spiritual growth, and Horace Greeley thought it admirable "if a man could only afford it." At the present time when so many teachers are shouting "Back to the soil" the merits of country life are more than ever in need of being investigated.

MAY

_May 3._--After all the talking we have been doing it is just possible that there is nothing the matter with Ontario. Ontario may just be passing through a crisis. It is a rich province and is steadily growing richer. Now, in the richest counties, such as Middlesex, a change has commenced that may indicate the future of the province. The hundred-acre superstition is breaking down. Time was when a man who had less than a hundred acres, even though he had it clear of debt, was considered poor--a man who was trying to farm in cramped conditions. As soon as he could he would sell it, often at a sacrifice, and buy a hundred-acre farm with a nice, hand-welted mortgage on it. Then he could hold up his head in the community. In those brave days, before the passage of the McKinley bill, land in lots smaller than a hundred acres sold at a disadvantage. Now, however, the smaller lots, when in decent condition, bring the best prices. There are townships like Caradoc, where twenty-five acre farms are in the majority, and the people are getting rich and richer. One man can just about work twenty-five acres properly. In some cases they specialise on fruits or gardening, but in most cases they go in for mixed farming, and do it with a profit. They work their land well, manure it well, and get crops that would stagger the statisticians of the junior provinces. Ontario land is not the kind that a man can sow with the wind and reap with a whirlwind, and then go to the mushroom-growth capital and talk about having eighteen bushels to the acre. Ontario land is the kind that should be cultivated with a garden rake; and then it will yield forty or more bushels to the acre.

It is true that here and there one strikes a little land baron who owns three or four hundred, or even a thousand acres, but that sort of thing is passing. If he has a family the land must be divided up among the children, either before or after the death of the owner, and if he has no family the land will eventually be sold in farm lots. Large holdings of land will not pay in Ontario unless they can be worked, and tenants are practically unknown. I do not know of a single tenant farmer in this district. With the breaking up of the land into small holdings Ontario will gradually become what nature intended it to be, a garden province raising fruits, vegetables, and other luxuries for the big, hurrying provinces that are making so much haste to get rich. The small-farm idea has a firm foothold in the Niagara Peninsula, and it is spreading. There is hardly an acre anywhere in the province that is not fitted for gardening or intensive farming, and in time the small farms will prevail everywhere. Then, instead of asking, "What's the matter with Ontario?" people will be saying, "Just look at Ontario!"

With the advent of the small farm the "good roads" problem is being solved. Where you find a group of twenty-five acre holdings you will find a stretch of good road. Improvements are not so burdensome where most of the farms have a frontage of only thirty rods. Even the roadwork or statute labour has more effect and comes nearer to giving good roads than in the large-farm districts. This is especially true where the use of the split-log drag is understood. There is no getting around the fact that perfected stone roads are expensive, and until a scheme has been hit on that will make them less burdensome it would be a good idea to expatiate on the merits of the split-log drag. It makes even earth roads passable for most of the year, but its use requires a certain amount of public spirit, and a public-spirited citizen is a man whose motives are suspected. Moreover, he is a very rare creature. It may be accepted as a truism that every stretch of good road in the country leads to the home of a public-spirited citizen, but the stretches are few. When you find one it is usually worth while to find out the story of how it came to be built so as to get a light on human nature. You will usually find that some energetic man, like the celebrated monk of Siberia, of mud became weary and wearier, until at last he began to stir up his neighbours and the township council in the matter. In collecting money from his neighbours, besides those who were willing to help, he struck two classes of those who lack public spirit. First, and these are plentiful, he struck the men who do not want to contribute for fear some one else, even a passing stranger, may get some benefit from their contributions without paying for it. Then there is the totally yellow type of man who is glad to know that the work is going on, but refuses to contribute a cent because he knows that his neighbours are going to put it through anyway, and he will get the benefit of it without helping. This type of man usually has a perverted sense of humour, and whenever the matter is referred to laughs loudly at the way he got the start of his neighbours. When the truly public-spirited man gets the necessary money collected, and gets the council to contribute its share, he usually has to keep an eye on the work until it is completed, and altogether contributes in time and money three or four times as much as any one else. But if he gets a good road built he is fully repaid for his efforts. He finds in the end that the work paid, even if done from selfish motives. But his good neighbours will not let matters rest there. They see back of his public-spirited efforts some design for getting himself elected councillor or something of that sort. For a man to do a thing wholly for the good of the community is too incredible. Where the small farms prevail public-spirited citizens are naturally more plentiful, as the population is greater, and the good-roads movement is thereby the gainer.

"Fair weather cometh out of the north," says the Book of Job, and fortified by this text I shall venture to say something about the spring weather. The last time I spoke about signs of fair weather it settled down and rained steadily for two weeks. But the clouds have blown away, clearing from the north, and to-day a fine, exhilarating north wind is blowing. Those who are weather-wise say that fine weather is at hand. We have had much rain, but not too much for the hay and wheat. The ground is as full of water as a soaked sponge, the wells are full to the brim, and all the streams are either overflowing their banks or full to the level of the ground. Enthusiasts say that never before has there been a better prospect of a good harvest. The fruit trees are crowded with blossoms that have not yet opened. The garden, looked at across the chicken-wire fence, shows the seeds and weeds all sprouting lustily, but the ground is too wet for any work to be done. A couple of days like to-day, however, will make things fit for hoeing and weeding.

I understand that there is a fortune awaiting the man who can hit on a sure plan for wintering bees. As an unsolved mystery it ranks with the bottle that cannot be refilled. Every sort of plan has been tried from burying the hives in pits or putting them in cellars to leaving them in the wind-swept open. Some years they winter successfully in one way and next year will all die off under exactly the same conditions. All kinds of plans have proven successful at different times, and then again have failed. A few weeks ago I helped to move a couple of hives that seemed strong and thrifty. They were heavy with honey, and it looked as if they had wintered properly. A week later every bee was dead and the hives were empty of honey. They had been attacked by robbers and cleaned out. How is it that they were unable to protect themselves? Wintering the bees seems to be the big unsolved problem of bee-keeping. If it were not for that bee-keepers would get rich too quickly, for when once a hive gets started properly on its summer work it does nothing but make money. This summer I expect to learn more about bee-keeping, for the bees are to be handled according to instructions furnished by the Agricultural College at Guelph. We are going to follow those instructions to the letter, even if we have to build a bee-house so as to "tack the instructions on the inside of the door," as advised in the circular.

The hen, when not kept within bounds, and when raised on the same farm as a garden, is a nuisance, but you can't help respecting her when you are asked to make yourself useful by gathering the eggs and find that you need a couple of twelve-quart pails to do the chore. With eggs at prevailing prices that sort of thing makes you feel that the Mint at Ottawa doesn't amount to so very much after all. But I have a dreadful secret to tell. All the poultry experts will call it heresy, and some poultry editor may hold me up to the scorn of the whole chicken-raising world, but I am going to tell it. This year the incubators have been loaned to ambitious amateurs, and all the chickens on this farm have been hatched out by nice, motherly old hens. They didn't have to have some one sit up nights with them, and they brought out a chicken from every egg but two. Besides, the chickens are so strong and healthy they have their feathers and are beginning to look like broilers at three weeks old. Of course, this is dreadfully unscientific. But it is "a condition, not a theory, that confronts us." Perhaps if I get time to look into the matter I may find that nature's way of raising chickens is scientific after all. Anyway, it is practical, and less than half the trouble.

_May 6._--Spring is here at last, joyous, effervescent, carolling, busy spring. The fields, the streams, and the air are full of it. It is harder to watch than a three-ring circus. Every nook and cranny has its side show. The world is alive, alive, alive. The downpour of rain a few days ago delayed seeding, so that I had time to look about me while the miracles of nature were being performed. On going to the woodlot I was surprised to find the mayflowers, adder's-tongues, trilliums, Dutchman's breeches, and hepaticas already in bloom and the violets just opening. By giving shelter from the winds and letting the sunlight through their bare branches, the trees seem to make a natural forcing bed for the flowers, so that the woods stir to life earlier than the fields and gardens. And now the leaves are coming out. The beeches are red, the maples a yellow green, and the elms misty and undefinable. The pastures and wheat fields are a vivid green, contrasting beautifully with the cool, brown earth of the ploughed land. The birds are so busy with their housekeeping that they hardly have time to sing, but when they do sing they throw their whole souls into it. One afternoon I heard so much music coming from the top of an elm that I had to investigate. I thought all the birds must have put through a merger in music and were celebrating, but I found that one solitary brown thrasher was doing it all. I knew that it belongs to the mocking-bird family, but as it is a newcomer in this district I had never before heard it give an exhibition of its powers. It made an amazingly joyous racket for a while, varying its imitations with original bits of its own. And it expressed exactly what I was feeling at the time.

I wonder just what the poets mean when they speak of spring as being "balmy." Steamy would describe the condition of the air this morning for purposes of prose. It has the warmth and moisture of air in a greenhouse and is laden with earthy odours. The spring crops are going in with a rush, for the season is so late that every day counts. To-day we are discing corn-ground for oats, and this afternoon I am going to hitch a bag over my shoulder and sow the grain, just as they do in the great paintings for which American millionaires pay such fabulous prices. I am not doing it for artistic effect either. I would much rather do it after the manner of the O. A. C. and use a common, everyday seed drill, but, with only ten acres of spring seeding to do, it would not pay a struggling farmer to buy a seed drill, and every drill in the neighbourhood has a previous engagement this morning. A man doesn't need a drill many days in the year, but on those days he needs it mightily. I wish I had the use of one, but, since I have not, the work must be done by hand. Anyway it will be an experience, and it is a method of doing the work that has been much praised in both prose and verse as well as in pictures. If I am not mistaken, there are several popular hymns on the subject, and I know that there is a song in one of the kindergarten books. I shall look it up in a few minutes, so that I shall be able to sing at my work as a farmer should. I have no conceit, however, that my singing will help to make the day more musical, but it may scare away the hens and keep them from following me too closely and picking up the scattered grain. But in weather like this everything goes. It even sounds good to hear the men in the fields yelling at the horses and the women scolding at the hens as they chase them out of their gardens. And it is all because it is spring, spring, spring!