Part 4

Of course it is not likely that we shall ever have any educational developments along the lines suggested, but why not? If education will cure all the troubles of the farmers, why shouldn't it be tried on a few other problems? When the promoters of mergers and combines begin to do things that are against the best interests of the country, why shouldn't the farmers all yell: "Educate them!" When politicians become subservient to the powers that prey on the resources of the country, why shouldn't we all start to "educate them"? It wouldn't be so very hard. A few well-placed votes at the right time would do wonders in the way of giving light and leading to those who are making trouble for us. Let the work of educating the farmers go right on, but I hope the farmers will soon feel that they have enough and to spare, and that they can devote a few hours to educating their leaders. "Educate him" is a beautiful cry for a campaign of education of the right kind, and as there are a lot of people besides the farmers who need education, I hope that it will soon swell to a fine chorus. Don't get mad at the people who are bamboozling you. Just give them a good dose of the medicine they are so fond of giving you. "Educate them."

_Feb. 4._--Have you ever noticed how the sounds carry on some winter mornings? One day last week we had a few hours when I felt as if I were eavesdropping on the whole countryside. The air was very still and judging from the way the smoke fell to the ground it was very light. When I went out to do the chores I was struck at once by the clearness with which I could hear things going on. I could hear the neighbours talking to their cattle and somewhere about a mile away an angry man was reasoning with an impenitent pig. I could hear what he said to the pig and what the pig said to him, and judging by what the pig said I think the man must have kicked him while pouring swill into the trough. Every sound started an echo that went bounding over the fields. I could hear a train moving on the Michigan Central Railroad twelve miles away and almost imagined I could hear the people in the town three miles off frying their breakfast bacon and grumbling about the high cost of living. I understand that the carrying quality of the air is due to its being thin or rarefied. According to the papers some inventor has increased the power of the telephone by having the air in the receiver warmed by some new device. The principle on which he works is probably the same as prevailed on this particular morning. The ease with which sounds carried was due to the condition of the atmosphere and that reminds me that at other times the air must be very heavy and dead. Anyway, I know that there are days when I cannot make a boy in the next room hear that the wood-box is empty even when I yell at the top of my voice. Now that must be due to the condition of the atmosphere, and I have noticed that the best way to overcome the difficulty is to warm things up.

_Feb. 7._--There seems to be something wrong about Mr. Glendinning's criticism of telephone and rural free delivery at the recent meeting of the Grange. It seems like flying in the face of progress at a time when every one is insisting that we might as well be dead as unprogressive. I have avoided the telephone myself, chiefly because I got tired of it in the city and did not want any one to call me up to talk things over unless I wanted to talk. I have always sympathised with the British in their attitude to the telephone. The best families may have one in the kitchen for ordering supplies, but they refuse to be disturbed by it themselves. When a Britisher goes to his home he wants it distinctly understood that his home is his castle, and when he takes up the drawbridge and lets down the portcullis no one can intrude on him without his permission. I have a very distinct recollection of having an interview with an English business man, and while we were talking the telephone bell on his desk began ringing. Instead of stopping to hear what was wanted he reached out and took the receiver from the hook and placed it on his desk so as to stop the ringing. He would not allow any one to reach him by the telephone any more than he would by letting them enter through the door of his office while he was keeping an engagement. As a contrast to this I remember an advertising man in New York telling me with much glee of being refused admission to a business man and instead of being discouraged he went to the nearest telephone booth, called the man up, submitted his proposition, and got his order. We people of the new world lack the necessary poise to use the telephone properly. When the bell rings we are consumed with curiosity until we know who is speaking and what is wanted. If we could learn the British method of using the telephone only when we need it, instead of using it for gossiping and all kinds of nonsense, and instead of being slaves to its constant ringing, there would be no good ground for objecting to it. There are still a few things that we can learn from the people in the Old Country.

_Feb. 9._--What are signs of spring, anyway? when I was out doing the chores this morning the thermometer stood at ten below zero and yet there was a feeling of Spring in the air. The sky and the sunshine had a look of spring and the sparrows were all chirping as if they were talking of the good times coming. There was a hen cackling over a new-laid egg that would be worth its weight in silver on the table of a Toronto millionaire, and about a dozen Leghorns had found their voices again and were making a feeble attempt to scratch in a forkful of straw that lay in the sunshine. And yet, as I have just said, it was ten below zero. When I got up to shake down the coal-stove about seven o'clock it was eighteen below. A little while later when the sun was peeping over the horizon I looked again, and after scratching away the hoarfrost that was settling on everything I found the mercury standing at twenty below. But, of course, the air was so dry I didn't mind it. Still, I didn't stand before the thermometer to think things over. I preferred standing as close to the stove as I could get. It did not seem much like spring just then. Come to think of it, I guess the signs of spring vary considerably. I remember years ago that a man who had moved to Dakota wrote home saying that it was beginning to look like spring out there. He said that the snow was already down to the tops of the windows.

_Feb. 11._--I have fully made up my mind that another winter will not catch me so unprepared as this one did. Early in the fall I shall get all my agricultural reports and farm bulletins warmly pitted, so that when I want a basketful of them to help spend the long winter evenings I shall know where to get them. Now when I go to look one up it usually cannot be found, or if it is to be found it is badly frostbitten and weather-beaten. Besides, when they are lying about loose they are in danger of being used for all sorts of things. The other day I wanted to read up on the question of early potatoes, but the pages of the Vegetable-growers' Report were missing. When I finally tracked them down I found that I would have to stand on my head to read them where they had been pasted upside down over a knothole in a shed. The bulletin on Alfalfa is missing too. I remember sitting on the fence reading it one day last fall, and in all probability I left it there while I went to do something else. Of course I intended to pick it up on my way back to the house. We all intend to do things like that, but somehow we seldom do. When I find it next spring it will probably be after a cow has stepped on it. It is a shame to do things in this way, for those bulletins are really valuable. I would feel worse about it, only I know that a lot of good farmers are just as careless about such things as I am.

_Feb. 14._--When I read the articles in the papers telling about the high cost of living I am moved to ask why thrifty housekeepers do not buy their supplies in the old-fashioned way and get along without paying the charges and profits of the packers and retailers. Last fall I bought a dressed hog, hunted up a good recipe for curing bacon, ham, and salt pork, and proceeded to prepare the winter supply. I also got a chart showing just how a pig should be cut up for curing, and followed all the directions carefully. By devoting a few hours to the job the winter pork was laid in at a cost of nine cents a pound. The only objection to this method was that the meat was so much better than the kind we had been buying at the stores for from twenty-three to twenty-seven cents a pound that we ate more of it. Encouraged by this experiment, I bought half of a fat heifer--like the man in the old joke we "killed half a cow"--and proceeded to cure the meat according to good recipes. As in the case of the pork, I got plans and specifications for cutting the beef, and followed the blue-print carefully. The beef is turning out as successfully as the pork, and the cost was nine cents a pound for the forequarter and ten cents a pound for the hindquarter. In this weather the roasts and steaks keep without curing of any kind, and besides a supply of corned beef and soup joints there was plenty of material for mincemeat and the old-fashioned "forcemeat" that could be found in any farmhouse in the days when people cured their own meat. This is a luxury I have looked for in vain in even the best restaurants. It is made by chopping together fresh beef and suet, moulding it in little cakes, and putting it away to set. This sounds as if it were a kind of Hamburg steak, but it is not. It has a flavour entirely its own. I imagine it is more like pemmican than anything else. And I mustn't forget the piece that is being spiced and dried. It seems to be coming on fine, and I have no doubt it will be just as good as the kind they charge thirty cents a pound for in the stores. I know all this sounds very carnivorous, but I don't care. I am not a believer in vegetarianism. I cannot forget that Cain was the first vegetarian on record, and we all know how bloodthirsty he got from living on fruits and salads. And the moral of it all is that the cost of living would not be so high if people did not turn over to the butchers and bakers and canners the work of curing and preparing their foodstuffs.

_Feb. 16._--I see that there is much being written about the advisability of giving "demonstrations" of proper beef-raising in various parts of the country so that the farmers may be induced to raise better stock. If the men who have this in mind will also arrange to give "demonstrations" of how to sell the finished product at a reasonable profit they may be able to accomplish something worth while.

_Feb. 17._--Now is the time to think about reforestation. If you are thinking of planting in the woodlot now is the time to apply to the Department of Forestry for trees. I understand it is a case of first come first served, and you cannot get your order in too early. Of the thousand and eighty trees I planted last spring about eight hundred survived the heat and drouth of last summer. That is sufficiently encouraging to make me apply for twice the number of trees this spring, so as to finish the job of reforestation that I set out to do. The conditions last summer were greatly against the little trees, and yet the result was satisfactory. Above all things, I wish to impress on those who undertake work of this kind the necessity of following to the letter the instructions given by the department. They seem to be about perfect. The way in which the sod is turned up and left beside the tree not only keeps down the weeds and grass, but I noticed in the fall that the hole made by lifting the sod filled in with leaves, and in that way gave the trees a perfect mulching for the winter. I expect to find them all looking fine and hearty when the snow melts in the spring.

_Feb. 18._--Well, the farming operations for this year have commenced in earnest. With the Ontario Government acting as my hired man, I propose to do a few things this summer--and to tell all about them. If we succeed we will try to be modest and if we fail we will be frank. What says the poet?

"'Tis not in mortals to command success; But we'll do more, Sir James: we'll deserve it."

This is how it happened: When I undertook to handle a farm by myself I was immediately confronted by the problem of labour. How was I to get a good, capable hired man to help me with my work? Not being able to solve the problem to my own satisfaction, I wrote to Mr. C. C. James, Commissioner of Agriculture, and put the matter up to him somewhat as follows:--

"From what I have been reading in your bulletins and reports I see no excuse for the man who has a good farm and some capital if he keeps on working in an unprofitable way. That is all very well as far as it goes, but there are thousands of people like myself whom it does not touch. Now, I want to know just what you can do for a man who is trying to farm without capital and with a lame horse that is blind in one eye."

This led to some correspondence, and I told him about the orchard on the place. There are over fifty mature trees of standard varieties that have been yielding occasional crops of fairly good but very wormy apples. Mr. James promptly rose to the occasion and agreed to send an expert to show me how to handle that orchard. This morning Mr. F. M. Clement, B.S.A., representative of the Ontario Department of Agriculture in Elgin county, came and pruned a tree for me and told just what he will do to get results from that orchard. He outlined his part of the work and my part, and we are going ahead. Just watch us.

Before telling of the interesting day I had with Mr. Clement I want to give some idea of the trouble many good people thought I was making for myself.

"You'll just find that you will have to work in that orchard all summer if you try to handle it according to the instructions of the Department of Agriculture. They'll make you scrape the trees and whitewash them and prune them and spray them three or four times and fertilise the land and work it every day. There will be no end to the fussing you will have to do."

That was the way they talked, but I just laid back my ears and looked stubborn. I made up my mind I would carry out all instructions, even if I had to work every day and then sit up every night with those trees. They told me that the scraping alone would take me at least three weeks of steady work on trees like those. I would find that those Spies and Baldwins were

"Wild and woolly and full of fleas; And had never been curried below the knees."

Nevertheless I was willing to curry them carefully, and even to go over them with a manicure set if that were necessary. And now my courage has been rewarded. Mr. Clement showed me how to curry an untamed tree, and estimated that I should be able to go over the whole orchard in two days at the outside. The pruning will take about a week. Then I shall have to devote about a day a week to the orchard for a couple of months. Mr. Clement and his assistant will do the spraying themselves to make sure that it is done right. That doesn't look as if I would not have any time left for anything else. Of course there is no knowing whether the work will pay or not. Unless there are plenty of fruit buds that have not been killed by the severe frosts there will be no crop. We shall have to wait until blossoming time to see what the prospects really are. In the meantime we shall do the necessary work of pruning, scraping, and the first spraying.

During the day Mr. Clement rid me of a few popular delusions. Ever since I can remember I have heard that an orchard will bear only every other year. It seems that this is true only of neglected orchards. Apple trees can be made by proper treatment to yield a decent crop every year. And yet I am not sure that I am rid of this bugbear of orcharding. This orchard has been neglected and it is just possible that this will be the off year. If the fruit buds are not on the trees all the expert work in the world will not make them bear apples. We made a hasty examination of a couple of trees and found some fruit buds, but not enough to make me see rosy visions of big profits. When I go at the pruning I shall examine more carefully, but in any case the treatment that will be given to the trees should insure a good crop next year. That seems to be the way with a whole lot of things on a farm. In order to get results you should have started working last year. I always seem to get started a year too late, but now that I have the Ontario Government shedding wisdom upon me I hope to do better. By the way, there was one thing that I forgot to ask Mr. Clement. I had been warned not to prune the trees during the full of the moon because at that time the bark is loose and the trees would be injured. But as Mr. Clement came on the second day of the new moon I presume he had this in mind. A man who has studied the question of orcharding as thoroughly as he has and has won so high a reputation for good work would never overlook so important a point.

From the above paragraphs you may get an impression that we are having spring weather out in the country. Well, it has been pretty decent for a few days, but at the time of writing the blizzard of the season is raging. Although it was quite mild on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and this morning was still temperate enough for us to prune trees, we are having a snowstorm-driven gale from the north-east that is piling such drifts as we have not seen for many a day.

_Feb. 19._--I have to thank F. M. Clement, B.S.A., for a kindness he had no thought of doing me. By a chance question he recast all my ideas of farm work. He flung two words at me over his shoulder, and instantly my ideas shifted, like the bits of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope when you shake the tube. He came over from Dutton yesterday to show me how to handle that orchard I have been talking about, and, to begin with, he pruned a tree. While at work, he explained just why he removed one branch and spared another, and told me just what I should have in mind when pruning a tree. Of this part of my experience I shall have nothing to say, for you can get such instructions as he gave in the bulletins or in _The Farmer's Advocate_. From time to time I asked questions, and tried to figure out just how much hard work I would have to do to get results. I was also figuring how much of the work I could get out of doing without being caught. But he finally completed his task, so that every branch was swinging free and open to the sunlight. Then he climbed down and looked at his work. I was standing behind him. Suddenly he asked, with a backward turn of his head:

"How's that?"

There you have the question that startled me. Simple enough, isn't it? There doesn't seem to be much to it, but wait.

It has been my privilege to stand beside a great artist while he drew aside the curtain from his picture, and then to have him fling the same question at me:

"How's that?"

It has also been my privilege to have poets whom the world acclaims as great, recite their poems to me, and then ask:

"How's that?"

To have the same question flung at me in the orchard was something of a shock. The manner and the tone were the same. I realised that once more I had been asked to pass on something in which a man had expressed himself. The chance question suddenly elevated work to a form of self-expression worthy to rank with the great arts. Ever since I have been able to see possibilities in work--mere work. It is something that a man can engage in as a man, and not simply as a drudge.

"How's that?"

Now the cat is out of the bag. I have let you see that I do not like physical work, and never have. But I am neither humiliated nor ashamed. Why should I like work? I have seen it in almost all its forms, and have practised it in a few. Almost everywhere it is slavish and sordid. I have seen it in the sweat-shops of the big cities, in the factories of the New England States, the mills of the south, and of England, and on the Canadian farms. Always it was wearing, soul-stifling, degrading. Men, women, and children--little children--were being ground to extinction by work. They became old before their time, broken-spirited, deformed. Work is a hideous monster, demanding all we can give of youth and strength and vitality, and giving in return only a starved and meagre living. Seeing work in this way, I learned to hate it. It has "the primal, eldest curse on it." It is slavery of the cruellest kind, and makes slaves of men even where they are their own masters. Do you wonder that I turned to the arts? The arts are joyous, exultant. They enable a man to express himself, and we all hunger for self-expression. The greatest tragedy in the world is to be misunderstood, and we are all misunderstood. The artist makes himself understood--at least, to a select few--but the worker usually dies

"With all his sweetness in him."

But here was a worker who expressed himself by an ordinary piece of farm work. He had laid creative hands on a tree, and it would take form as a picture might under the brush of an artist, or a song on the lips of a poet. He had put into it his conception of what it should be. In that way he gave expression to his own soul, and was willing that the world should look and see. He had enjoyed the task because he had a definite purpose and knew just what he was doing. He got the effect he was after, just as an artist might when working under the stimulus of an urgent inspiration. I looked with new-found admiration, and now the tree has a new meaning to me. I feel that he has revealed to me something of himself, just as did the artists and the poets.

How's that?

Since getting this little flash of light, farm work has looked very good. Farming is a great art, and the artist works with life, rather than with pigments or words. He gets his effects by working in accord with Nature. Surely that is greater than merely imitating Nature, or describing it. And, though I look at farming in this way, I do not regard it any the less as a science or as a money-making proposition. In fact, it should be all the more scientific and profitable by making it artistic. The art puts the joy into it and elevates it above mere drudgery. Mark Twain said that "Play is work that a man enjoys," and I see no reason why many kinds of farm work should not have the charm of play. If we could only go at it in that way, we would accomplish more, and life would be more worth living.