Part 20

The wheat harvest is now on and progressing at the same rate as did the haying. The self-binders are doing the heavy work, but there is no machine for loading or unloading the sheaves. They must be handled with a fork and to put in a full day at that is to know what hard work means. The sheaves are of uniform size, however, and that is an advantage. In the days of the self-rake machines that did not measure the sheaves automatically, but had to be "tripped" by the driver, they varied from a few wisps to huge bundles that would break the fork handles. This inequality made pitching a worse job than it is to-day. By doing the binding, the modern reaper has relieved harvesting of its heaviest work. It used to take four men to keep up with an old self-rake machine and many a good man was "bushed"--that is, driven to the bush to cool off and rest--by the killing pace. Before the day of the self-rake machine the grain was harvested with the cradle, and cradling was work for a giant. A farmer whose memory goes back to the days of cradling tells a story on himself that is worth repeating because of the light it casts on the women who helped to build up Canada. In his day he was a master with the old turkey-wing cradle, and it was his boast that few binders could keep up with him when he went swinging down a field. When his own wheat was harvested it was his custom to "hire out" to do cradling for the neighbours. On one occasion he hired out with a farmer whose daughters,

"Huge women, stronger than men, Blowzed with wind and rain and labour,"

used to help with the harvest. When he went to the field in the morning he was accompanied by one of these Amazons, who proposed to bind after him. He started down the field at an easy swing and when he reached the end of the swath and prepared to whet the scythe of his cradle he glanced around to see how his partner was progressing. To his surprise he found that she had just tossed aside the last sheaf. With the handle of the rake resting on her shoulder, she was mopping her face with a corner of her apron. As she caught his eye she remarked cordially:

"It's a het day, Mr. Jamieson."

On the next round he bent to his work with all his energy, but when he reached the end of the swath and glanced around his triumphant partner remarked:

"It's a het day, Mr. Jamieson."

All day long he plunged ahead, but she kept at his heels, and when the last swath was cut and the last sheaf bound she threw the rake over her shoulder and remarked:

"It has been a het day, Mr Jamieson."

It is generally believed that later on he proposed to the Amazon and that the answer she gave made it "a cauld day" for Mr. Jamieson.

With the spirit of harvest home in the air it is a source of real joy to one who reclines in a hammock and meditates on what other people do that the last word on these happy festivals has been written by a Canadian. All the poets have had a try at it and some of them did fairly well, but it remained for McIntyre of Ingersoll, The Cheese Poet, to reach the fundamental truth. With the plain practical common sense for which he was noted, he penetrated through all the shams and make-believes that always surround periods of thanksgiving and let the truth gush forth in limpid verse. His poem on "Big Crops" closes with a couplet that should be better known, for it is undoubtedly destined to immortality. Hearken to McIntyre:

"Forty bushels to the acre Makes us grateful to our Maker."

There you have it. Can you add anything or take anything away! To approve its truth you have but to notice the thin, sour smile of the man whose crops yielded but ten bushels to the acre when he takes up the Thanksgiving hymn. Then behold the irradiating happiness of him whose bins are bursting with a forty-bushel crop. Note how he bellows forth the strains and makes a joyful noise. Unquestionably the laurels belong to McIntyre. He has summed up the harvest-home spirit once for all.

To the hammock comes the odour of raspberry jam in the making. Owing to the dry weather the raspberries were not plentiful this year, but they are well-flavoured. The same report applies to currants, gooseberries, and all other small fruits. The prospect for apples is excellent. The trees are heavily loaded, and where they have been properly sprayed there will be a good yield. It seems incredible, and yet it is true, that in different parts of Ontario thousands of bushels of the best apples are allowed to rot every year because the farmers cannot get enough to pay for the labour of picking and marketing the fruit. Yet good apples are dear in the cities. Just where the trouble lies is not quite clear.

Of all the delights enjoyed by the occupant of the hammock, watching the sunsets is chief. This summer they have been unusually fine, owing to the storms that threatened and turned aside. Each evening has given a picture of marvellous splendour, ranging from light streaks of silvery cloud over blue skies of illimitable depth to masses of rose and gold. Sometimes the colours are confined to one glowing spot. At others they spread over the whole sky, varying in their shadings at each shifting of the clouds. To this splendour of the skies must be added the silvery grey of the oat and barley fields, and the cool green of the woods, shot with streaks of golden sunlight. Mountainous countries may show more stupendous effects, but the sunsets of the level reaches of central Ontario have a beauty that it would be hard to rival. And after the sunset the stars come out, and hours of waking dreams precede the hours of dreamless sleep that only the quiet country can give. It is all very good.

_July 30._--There are no doubt many hot jobs on the farms during the summer months, but up to the present writing I have struck nothing hotter than cultivating corn in the still, humid hours of the early afternoon when a thunderstorm is gathering. As the green-headed flies are always at their worst just before a storm, they get the horse frantic, and her attempts to dislodge her tormentors with her hind feet are so disastrous to the growing hills of corn that a man's temperature goes up steadily until he makes a sweating, panting, howling exhibition of himself. These flies are said to be especially bad this summer, and one "grave and reverent seignior" told me that the ones that attacked his horses not only bit them, but took out chunks of flesh and flew away to the woods with them, where they could eat them at their leisure. But I have my doubts of that. I am beginning to suspect that real farmers take a delight in telling me whoppers, and otherwise imposing on my credulity. For instance, a man was telling me what a hearty feeder one of his horses is.

"Why," he said, "when she is pasturing, and makes up her mind that she wants to have a roll, she never stops eating. She lies down, still eating away, and rolls over and over, without ever missing a bite." Now, I leave it to the editor if that man wasn't stretching it a little bit. But to get back to hot jobs. I thought that my job of cultivating in the blazing sun was hot enough for any one, but I am told that a man who has never mowed away hay under a steel roof has no idea of what heat is. According to the accounts I have heard, it must be a trifle worse than mining borax in Death Valley, and that is said to be the hottest job that any human being ever undertook. But the corn job is hot enough for me.

Yesterday afternoon I was nearer to being "bushed" than I have been since undertaking to work a farm. I was pitching hay in the field--I am told it was native blue grass, and unusually heavy--and the coils were compact, and looked to have only about one forkful in each one. We were working at the gait of men who want to get a stack finished before a shower, and I thought I was good for anything that came along. But before evening I hadn't a word to say to any one. They could "josh" me all they wanted to, but I hadn't the energy to answer back. Every coil was bigger and heavier than the last, and the day kept getting hotter and the wind died down, and the weather got more threatening, until it seemed as if human nature couldn't stand more, but the rest of the gang didn't find out how tuckered I was. I managed to stick it out, but I am not anxious to repeat the experience. If a large plantigrade man had come along hunting for work while the trouble was in progress, he could have had any price he asked, but hired men are too scarce to be foot-loose at this time of the year. Oh, yes, I know I should be up-to-date and have a hay loader and hay fork, but any implement agent who reads this will be wasting his time if he comes and tries to sell them to me. I have noticed that a lot of farmers who are farming on about the same scale as I am keep themselves poor buying the latest improvements, and I am not ambitious to join their melancholy ranks. Improved implements are an excellent thing to have if one has enough work for them to do, but there are cases where the sensible thing is to be old-fashioned. Muscle is still cheaper than machinery for small jobs.

This experience started me meditating on hired men I have known. Where now can we find the equals of those wonderful workers who were known in "the short and simple annals of the poor" as "Bill the Cow" and "Three-fingered Jack, the Human Hayfork"? Bill used to laugh aloud at ordinary haycocks. What he wanted was young stacks, and he would heave them up whole, and was insulted if offered anything smaller than a barley fork to work with. And when hay forks were first introduced, did not Three-fingered Jack get all lit up at the fall fair and start on a rampage to find the agent who had sold the toys. He reeled up and down the one street of the village and "bellered like all Bashan," and breathed slaughter, and would not be comforted when he could not find the man who was spoiling the good old pastime of haymaking by introducing horse forks. Those men used to work from dawn until after dark on the longest days, and they hated a mid-day shower as badly as the men who hired them. But where are they now? For answer, let us cull a fitting threnody from Homer, mighty singer of heroes:

"They long since in earth's soft arms are reposing, Afar from their own dear land, their native land--Lacedemon."

Instead of Lacedemon, read Scotland, or England, or Ireland. They died, and their methods of working died with them. If they could only come back, we would organise excursions and charge an admission fee to those who wished to see them at work. But we are living in another and no doubt a better age. Men do not work as they did, and could not if they wanted to. Compared with them, we are a degenerate race, even though we wear finely-laundered linen when we go to town, instead of donning paper collars and putting butter on our hair.

Of course, time is very valuable, and we are assured by all kinds of wise people that "Time is Money." Even _The Farmer's Advocate_ has published articles telling what to do on rainy afternoons, so that no time may be lost. All this is no doubt very excellent, and far be it from me to say anything that might justify lazy people in wasting time, but I am still of the opinion that no man should work during the first few minutes after a summer shower. When everything in nature has been refreshed, he should try to breathe in a little of the refreshment himself. The air is so pure, and everything in the fields and woods so beautiful that it is positively invigorating to share in the joy by which we are surrounded at such times. Even the birds, though their broods may be hungry, stop for a chorus of song among the dripping leaves. Before the storm comes up all nature is parched and wilting, but after it has passed everything is throbbing with life. The corn and oats are a fresher green, and sparkle with countless jewels. It is at such times that life in the country is at its best, if we will only forget our cares and worries to enjoy it, even though only for a minute. The beauty of the world needs to be harvested and stored away in the memory just as carefully as the crops that are now causing us so much concern. The memory of what is beautiful should be as precious to us as full granaries.

AUGUST

_Aug. 3._--There may be more argumentative jobs than thinning apples, but, as yet, I have not come across them. For the past couple of weeks I have been constantly on the defensive. Everybody seems to think that I am more destructive than a windstorm and that I am simply wasting apples. But the last time Mr. Clement came to see the orchard he said that there was altogether too much fruit, that it would not mature properly, and that if I wanted good fruit I would have to pick off a large percentage. Mine not to question why, mine but to do or die--and I went at it. In all the time I have been able to spare from other work and from arguments I have been stripping apples from the trees until the ground is covered with them. It does look like a slaughter, but there are still so many apples on the trees that there should be a big enough crop to satisfy any one. Besides, I have a little demonstration of the value of thinning the apples that satisfies me entirely. There are two branches of the Red Astrachan that according to the traditions of the orchard have never borne on the same year as the rest of the tree. When we were spraying in the spring these branches had such a trifling sprinkling of blossoms that I thought they were going to live up to their reputation. The rest of the tree was full of bloom. However, the whole tree was sprayed thoroughly and the straggling blossoms on the branches that were supposed to have missed were saved as well as the rest. At the present time the Red Astrachans are ripe and the two off-year branches are fairly well loaded with magnificent apples. Now that each stray blossom has matured in a perfect apple those branches are a sight worth seeing. Of course the rest of the tree is loaded, but the apples are small and many of them are badly shaped. All the best apples are on the two branches that were supposed to have missed. And I am inclined to think that the big apples on these branches would weigh fully as much as the small apples that are crowded on any two similar branches in the other part of the tree. And the big apples are not only a delight to the eye, but they are ripened better and are of finer flavour. An examination of that tree would convince any one that it does not pay to have too much fruit on the tree, but I seem to be about the only one it has convinced. "It just happened that way."

When Mr. Clement ordered the thinning to be done I admit I started at it with reluctance. There was one tree in particular that I hated to touch. It is a small tree that has nothing in it but fruit wood and every twig and spray is loaded. No one is able to tell me what kind it is, but those who are familiar with the orchard say it is a better apple than the Spy. Now, if there is a better apple than the Spy I want to know what it is. Yet they say that in the winter when they wanted a good apple to eat they would always take this one in preference to all others. Up to the present I have tasted no apple that suits my taste so thoroughly as a good ripe Spy and my mouth is watering already at the prospect of having something better. I have a sneaking hope that it is a new variety. I know that there are a few natural fruits in the orchard that grew from roots of the planted trees after the grafts had died. Wouldn't it be great luck if this was one? I cannot imagine how it could be a better apple than the Spy and not be known to everybody, if it is an established variety. Anyway, this tree is so beautifully loaded that it has been the show tree of the orchard. I always take every one to see it. But when Mr. Clement looked at it he said, "At least one-third of those apples should come off"--and they have come off. When he looked at the tree the fruit was not sufficiently developed for him to say what the variety is--especially as it is said to be better than the Spy. The number of apples that are better than the Spy must be very limited, but he did not seem to know what they could be any more than I do. I guess he must like Spies, too.

Though it was a painful job to pick so many apples off my pet tree, I was not much happier when thinning the Spies. I wished that there was some way of making them all mature properly, but as that way does not seem to be known to the scientists I did as I was told. But I didn't thin very savagely. I confined myself largely to apples that were badly formed or showed some blemish. Here and there on the lower branches there were occasional scabs and a few appeared to have been bitten or stung by insects, but on the whole the fruit looks clean and thrifty. The Baldwins, Kings, and Pippins were well loaded, but did not need any thinning. The chief destruction took place among the Ben Davises and Pewaukees. According to Mr. Clement, they had twice too many apples, and I guess he was right, for some of the branches were breaking under their load of fruit some weeks ago. I did not mind stripping the fruit from these inferior kinds, and it was an easier job as all I had to consider was the number of apples to be left on the branches. They were all clean and well formed, but on the Pewaukees especially they were so plentiful that some branches looked like clusters of grapes. On one branch I found a cluster of fifteen apples growing so close to one another that they could not move. They were wedged together like Brazil nuts. It would be impossible for such clusters to mature and colour properly, and thinning them out seemed to me a perfectly reasonable process, though when other people saw the apples on the ground they protested and could not understand why so much fruit should be wasted. Judging from all I have heard thinning apples must be something new in this part of the country.

_Aug. 5._--Now that the celery is banked up and blanching properly I feel like expressing surprise that more farmers do not raise this excellent vegetable. It is easy to raise--the proof being that I can raise it. Every year we have had better luck with the celery than with anything else in the garden. We sow the seed in the spring when the ground is warm, transplant early in August, and then keep the ground clean. An hour's work each week sufficed to care for five hundred plants. The celery has been no harder to attend to than the potatoes. I am afraid too many people regard celery as a luxury, and would only think of raising it to sell. Our experience has been that we do not tire of it even though we have it every day in the fall and winter, and I regard it just as necessary to our winter supplies as potatoes. In the past we have pitted it in trenches in the ground, but last winter the mice got into some of the trenches, and this year they are so plentiful we do not dare to take any chances. The intention is to make a concrete root-house in a side-hill and keep the celery in it. This vegetable has something of a high-toned reputation because it is always served at banquets, but there is no reason why it should not be on every farmer's table. When it is crisp and well developed everybody likes it. All it needs to make it grow properly is an abundance of fertiliser and that is easy to get on the farm. We raise our celery in an old barn yard and I have yet to find any that beats our home grown. Our favourite is the White Plume, and though it is listed as a fall variety we have had it in first-class condition in February and a neighbour managed to keep it in a cellar all through March. Besides being good eating I am assured that its food and even medicinal values are high.

An altogether too meagre newspaper report tells that when President Creelman of the O.A.C. was addressing the guests at a luncheon given by the directors of the Industrial Exhibition in Toronto he said that there is a crying need for fun on the farm. I have noticed that. Farms are terribly serious-minded places. It was a city poet, not a country poet, who wrote:

"I dance at work, I dance at play, I dance the whole d--d livelong day."

Hard work seems to kill a man's capacity for fun, and of hard work on a farm there seems to be no end. But if Professor Creelman has any scheme for enlivening the labour of the farm so that men will sing at their work he will do as much for them as he can by teaching scientific farming.

THE BURDEN OF LABOUR

Behold, O God of seedtime, Thy children, how they toil! Scattering the seed before Thee On the altar of the soil. Thy little birds with music Disport on joyous wing, But we who feed the nations, We are too tired to sing.

Behold, O God of harvest, The burden of our days, We gather in Thy bounty And may not stop to praise. Thy little birds around us The spell of music fling, But we who feed the nations, We are too tired to sing.

O God of those who labour In field and mill and mine, With whirling wheels to drive us, Lo, we are also Thine! Thy little birds a-lilting Come back to us each spring, But we who feed the nations, We are too tired to sing.

_Aug. 8._--When it comes to appreciating the bounty of nature you should go to a city. That's where you hear the stimulating talk. When I was in Toronto last week I heard more downright blowing about crops than I have heard in the country in the past year.

"Say! I wish you could take a run out to my place and see my garden," exclaimed one enthusiast after we had shaken hands and I had proudly pressed my callous spots into his soft and ladylike palm. "I tell you it's great."

Having had a city garden of my own years ago, and farther south, I couldn't help asking a few leading questions.

"Are you going in for specialties or doing ordinary mixed gardening?"

"Oh, I have a little of everything," he replied with the jaunty air of a man determined to bluff it out. "Say! I had a tomato for breakfast out of my own garden this morning."

I looked properly astonished, and even went so far as to admit that all the tomatoes I had enjoyed so far this season had been bought in a grocery store.

"Yes, sir! And I have had a tomato for breakfast from that garden every morning for the last three mornings."

"I notice that you speak of your tomato in the singular. Don't the other members of the family like tomatoes?"

"Aw, see here," he protested with offended dignity, "I'm not running a farm. I'm gardening on a town lot."

"Quite so. How is your squash doing?" I began to use the singular also.

"Say!" he exclaimed in a confidential tone, seeing that I understood something of his difficulties, "I admit that that squash was a mistake. The vine has already covered the carrot bed and the gravel walk, and is trespassing on my neighbour's lot at the rate of one yard of vine and three big leaves a day. It is making my garden look like a tropical jungle, and there isn't a sign of a squash on it yet, though there have been plenty of blossoms."

"How much space have you under garden?" I asked abruptly.

"Well," he squirmed, "we have a forty-foot frontage, and the garden runs back about thirty feet, but I haven't got it all under vegetables. We have a fine peach tree and a lilac bush, and my wife has a couple of flower beds in one corner, but I have all I can really attend to. It is intensive gardening all right, but we have been having something from it every day since the first radishes and lettuce came in."

Further conversation brought out the fact that he has four stalks of corn in his garden, and that some day soon he is going to have green corn for dinner. His corn is doing fine, by the way, and doesn't seem to be affected by the heat and drought.