Chapter 40

THE TIMOTHY HARVEST

On Friday, the 25th, the children came home from their schools, and with them came Jim Jarvis to spend the summer holidays. Our invitation to Jarvis had been unanimous when he bade us good-by in the winter. Jack was his chum, Polly had adopted him, I took to him from the first, and Jane, in her shy way, admired him greatly. The boys took to farm life like ducks to water. They were hot for any kind of work, and hot, too, from all kinds. I could not offer anything congenial until the timothy harvest in July. When this was on, they were happy and useful at the same time,--a rare combination for boys.

The timothy harvest is attractive to all, and it would be hard to find a form of labor which contributes more to the æsthetic sense than does the gathering of this fragrant grass. At four o'clock on a fine morning, with the barometer "set fair," Thompson started the mower, and kept it humming until 6.30, when Zeb, with a fresh team, relieved him. Zeb tried to cut a little faster than his father, but he was allowed no more time. Promptly at nine he was called in, and there was to be no more cutting that day. At eleven o'clock the tedder was started, and in two hours the cut grass had been turned. At three o'clock the rake gathered it into windrows, from which it was rolled and piled into heaps, or cocks, of six hundred or eight hundred pounds each. The cutting of the morning was in safe bunches before the dew fell, there to go through the process of sweating until ten o'clock the next day. It was then opened and fluffed out for four hours, after which all hands and all teams turned to and hauled it into the forage barn.

The grass that was cut one morning was safely housed as hay by the second night, if the weather was favorable; if not, it took little harm in the haycocks, even from foul weather. It is the sun-bleach that takes the life out of hay.

This year we had no trouble in getting fifty tons of as fine timothy hay as horses could wish to eat or man could wish to see. We began to cut on Tuesday, the 6th of July, and by Saturday evening the twenty-acre crop was under cover. The boys blistered their hands with the fork handles, and their faces, necks, and arms with the sun's rays, and claimed to like the work and the blisters. Indeed, tossing clean, fragrant hay is work fit for a prince; and a man never looks to better advantage or more picturesque than when, redolent with its perfume, he slings a jug over the crook in his elbow and listens to the gurgle of the home-made ginger ale as it changes from jug to throat. There may be joys in other drinks, but for solid comfort and refreshment give me a July hay-field at 3 P.M., a jug of water at forty-eight degrees, with just the amount of molasses, vinegar, and ginger that is Polly's secret, and I will give cards and spades to the broadest goblet of bubbles that was ever poured, and beat it to a standstill. Add to this a blond head under a broad hat, a thin white gown, such as grasshoppers love, and you can see why the emptying of the jug was a satisfying function in our field; for Jane was the one who presided at these afternoon teas. Often Jane was not alone; Florence or Jessie, or both, or others, made hay while the sun shone in those July days, and many a load went to the barn capped with white and laughter. The young people decided that a hay farm would be ideal--no end better than a factory farm--and advised me to put all the land into timothy and clover. I was not too old to see the beauties of haying-time, with such voluntary labor; but I was too old and too much interested with my experiment to be cajoled by a lot of youngsters. I promised them a week of haying in each fifty-two, but that was all the concession I would make. Laura said:--

"We are commanded to make hay while the sun shines; and the sun always shines at Four Oaks, for me."

It was pretty of her to say that; but what else would one expect from Laura?

The twelve acres from which the fodder oats had been cut were ploughed and fitted for sugar beets and turnips. I was not at all certain that the beets would do anything if sown so late, but I was going to try. Of the turnips I could feel more certain, for doth not the poet say:--

"The 25th day of July, Sow your turnips, wet or dry"?

As the 25th fell on Sunday, I tried to placate the agricultural poet by sowing half on the 24th and the other half on the 26th, but it was no use. Whether the turnip god was offended by the fractured rule and refused his blessing, or whether the dry August and September prevented full returns, is more than I can say. Certain it is that I had but a half crop of turnips and a beggarly batch of beets to comfort me and the hogs.

Some little consolation, however, was found in Polly's joy over a small crop of currants which her yearling bushes produced. I also heard rumors of a few cherries which turned their red cheeks to the sun for one happy day, and then disappeared. Cock Robin's breast was red the next morning, and on this circumstantial evidence Polly accused him. He pleaded "not guilty," and strutted on the lawn with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and his suspected breast as much in evidence as a pouter pigeon's. A jury, mostly of blackbirds, found the charge "not proven," and the case was dismissed. I was convinced by the result of this trial that the only safe way would be to provide enough cherries for the birds and for the people too, and ordered fifty more trees for fall planting. I found by experience, that if one would have bird neighbors (and who would not?), he must provide liberally for their wants and also for their luxuries. I have stolen a march as to the cherries by planting scores of mulberry trees, both native and Russian. Birds love mulberries even better than they do cherries, and we now eat our pies in peace. To make amends for this ruse, I have established a number of drinking fountains and free baths; all of which have helped to make us friends.

In August I sold, near the top of a low market, 156 young hogs. At $4.50 per hundred, the bunch netted me $1807. They did not weigh quite as much as those sold the previous autumn, and I found two ways of accounting for this. The first and most probable was that fall pigs do not grow so fast as those farrowed in the spring. This is sufficient to account for the fact that the herd average was twenty pounds lighter than that of its predecessor. I could not, however, get over the notion that Anderson's nervousness had in some way taken possession of the swine (we have Holy Writ for a similar case), and that they were wasted in growth by his spirit of unrest. He was uniformly kind to them and faithful with their food, but there was lacking that sense of cordial sympathy which should exist between hog and man if both would appear at their best. Even when Anderson came to their pens reeking with the rich savor of the food they loved, their ears would prick up (as much as a Chester White's ears can), and with a "woof!" they would shoot out the door, only to return in a moment with the greatest confidence. I never heard that "woof" and saw the stampede without looking around for the "steep place" and the "sea," feeling sure that the incident lacked only these accessories to make it a catastrophe.

Anderson was good and faithful, and he would work his arms and legs off for the pigs; but the spirit of unrest entered every herd which he kept, though neither he nor I saw it clearly enough to go and "tell it in the city." With other swineherds my hogs averaged from fifteen to eighteen pounds better than with faithful Anderson, and I am, therefore, competent to speak of the gross weight of the spirit of contentment.