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Phases Of Farm Life
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I have thought that a good test of civilization, perhaps one of the
best, is country life. Where country life is safe and enjoyable,
where many of the conveniences and appliances of the town are joined
to the large freedom and large benefits of the country, a high state
of civilization prevails. Is there any proper country life in Spain,
in Mexico, in the South American States? Man has always dwelt in
cities, but he has not always in the same sense been a dweller in the
country. Rude and barbarous people build cities. Hence, paradoxical
as it may seem, the city is older than the country. Truly, man made
the city, and after he became sufficiently civilized, not afraid of
solitude, and knew on what terms to live with nature, God promoted
him to life in the country. The necessities of defense, the fear of
enemies, built the first city, built Athens, Rome, Carthage, Paris.
The weaker the law, the stronger the city. After Cain slew Abel he
went out and built a city, and murder or the fear of murder, robbery
or the fear of robbery, have built most of the cities since.
Penetrate into the heart of Africa, and you will find the people, or
tribes, all living in villages or little cities. You step from the
jungle or the forest into the town; there is no country. The best and
most hopeful feature in any people is undoubtedly the instinct that
leads them to the country and to take root there, and not that which
sends them flocking to the town and it distractions. |
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The lighter the snow, the more it drifts; and the more frivolous the
people, the more they are blown by one wind or another into towns and cities.
The only notable exception I recall to city life preceding country
life is furnished by the ancient Germans, of whom Tacitus says that
they had no cities or contiguous settlements. "They dwell
scattered and separate, as a spring, a meadow, or a grove may chance
to invite them. Their villages are laid out, not like ours [the
Romans] in rows o adjoining buildings, but every one surrounds his
house with a vacant space, either by way of security, or against
fire, or through ignorance of the art of building." |
These ancient Germans were indeed true countrymen. Little wonder that
they overran the empire of the city-loving Romans, and finally sacked
Rome itself. How hairy and hardy and virile they were! In the same
way is the more fresh and vigorous blood of the country always making
eruptions into the city. The Goths and Vandals from the woods and the
farms,-what would Rome do without them, after all? The city rapidly
uses men up; families run out, man becomes sophisticated and feeble.
A fresh stream of humanity is always setting from the country into
the city; a stream not so fresh flows back again into the country, a
stream for the most part of jaded and pale humanity. It is arterial
blood when it flows in, and venous blood when it comes back.
A nation always begins to rot first in its great cities, is indeed
perhaps always rotting there, and is saved only by the antiseptic
virtues of fresh supplies of country blood.
But it is not of country life in general that I am to speak, but of
some phases of farm life, and of farm life in my native State.
Many of the early settlers of New York were from New England,
Connecticut perhaps sending out the most. My own ancestors were from
the latter State. The Connecticut emigrant usually made his first
stop in our river counties, Putnam, Dutchess, or Columbia. If he
failed to find his place there, he made another flight to Orange, to
Delaware, or to Schoharie County, where he generally stuck. But the
State early had one element introduced into its rural and farm life
not found farther east, namely, the Holland Dutch. These gave
features more or less picturesque to the country that are not
observable in New England. The Dutch took root at various points
along the Hudson, and about Albany and in the Mohawk valley, and
remnants of their rural and domestic architecture may still be seen
in these sections of the State. A Dutch barn became proverbial.
"As broad as a Dutch barn" was a phrase that, when applied
to the person of a man or woman, left room for little more to be
said. The main feature of these barns was their enormous expansion of
roof. It was a comfort to look at them, they suggested such shelter
and protection. The eaves were very low and the ridge-pole very high.
Long rafters and short posts gave them a quaint, short-waisted,
grandmotherly look. They were nearly square, and stood very broad
upon the ground. Their form was doubtless suggested by the damper
climate of the Old World, where the grain and hay, instead of being
packed in deep solid mows, used to be spread upon poles and exposed
to the currents of air under the roof. Surface and not cubic capacity
is more important in these matters in Holland than in this country.
Our farmers have found that, in a climate where there is so much
weather as with us, the less roof you have the better. Roofs will
leak, and cured hay will keep sweet in a mow of any depth and size in
our dry atmosphere.
The Dutch barn was the most picturesque barn that has been built,
especially when thatched with straw, as they nearly all were, and
forming one side of an inclosure of lower roofs or sheds also covered
with straw, beneath which the cattle took refuge from the winter
storms. Its immense, unpainted gable, cut with holes for the
swallows, was like a section of a respectable-sized hill, and its
roof like it slope. Its great doors always had a hood projecting over
them, and the doors themselves were divided horizontally into upper
and lower halves; the upper halves very frequently being left open,
through which you caught a glimpse of the mows of hay, or the twinkle
of flails when the grain was being threshed.
The Old Dutch farmhouses, too, were always pleasing to look upon.
They were low, often made of stone, with deep window-jambs and great
family fireplaces. The outside door, like that of the barn, was
always divided into upper and lower halves. When the weather
permitted, the upper half could stand open, giving light and air
without the cold draught over the floor where the children were
playing that our wide-swung doors admit. This feature of the Dutch
house and barn certainly merits preservation in our modern buildings.
The large, unpainted timber barns that succeeded the first Yankee
settlers log stables were also picturesque, especially when a lean-to
for the cowstable was added, and the roof carried down with a long
sweep over it; or when the barn was flanked by an open shed with a
hayloft above it, where the hens cackled and hid their nests, and
from the open window of which the hay was always hanging.
Then the great timbers of these barns and the Dutch barn, hewn from
maple or birch or oak trees from the primitive woods, and put in
place by the combined strength of all the brawny arms in the
neighborhood when the barn was raised,-timbers strong enough and
heavy enough for docks and quays, and that have absorbed the odors of
the hay and grain until they look ripe and mellow and full of the
pleasing sentiment of the great, sturdy, bountiful interior! The
"big beam" has become smooth and polished from the hay that
has been pitched over it, and the sweaty, sturdy forms that have
crossed it. One feels that he would like a piece of furniture-a
chair, or a table, or a writing-desk, a bedstead, or a
wainscoting-made from these long-seasoned, long-tried, richly toned
timbers of the old barn. But the smart-painted, natty barn that
follows the humbler structure, with its glazed windows, its
ornamented ventilator and gilded weather vane,-who cares to
contemplate it? The wise human eye loves modesty and humility; loves
plain, simple structures; loves the unpainted barn that took no
thought of itself, or the dwelling that looks inward and not outward;
is offended when the farm-buildings get above their business and
aspire to be something on their own account, suggesting, not cattle
and crops and plain living, but the vanities of the town and the
pride of dress and equipage.
Indeed, the picturesque in human affairs and occupations is always
born of love and humility, as it is in art or literature; and it
quickly takes to itself wings and flies away at the advent of pride,
or any selfish or unworthy motive. The more directly the farm savors
of the farmer, the more the fields and buildings are redolent of
human care and toil, without any thought of the passer-by, the more
we delight in the contemplation of it.
It is unquestionably true that farm life and farm scenes in this
country are less picturesque than they were fifty or one hundred
years ago. This is owing partly to the advent of machinery, which
enables the farmer to do so much of his work by proxy, and hence
removes him farther from the soil, and partly to the growing distaste
for the occupation among our people. The old settlers-our fathers and
grandfathers-loved the farm, and had no thoughts above it; but the
later generations are looking to the town and its fashions, and only
waiting for a chance to flee thither. Then pioneer life is always
more or less picturesque; there is no room for vain and foolish
thoughts; it is a hard battle, and the people have no time to think
about appearances. When my grandfather and grandmother came into the
country where they reared their family and passed their days, they
cut a road through the woods and brought all their worldly gear on a
sled drawn by a yoke of oxen. Their neighbors helped them build a
house of logs, with a roof of black-ash bark and a floor of hewn
white-ash plank. A great stone chimney and fireplace-the mortar of
red clay-gave light and warmth, and cooked the meat and baked the
bread, when there was any to cook or to bake. Here they lived and
reared their family, and found life sweet. Their unworthy descendant,
yielding to the inherited love of the soil, flees the city and its
artificial ways, and gets a few acres in the country, where he
proposes to engage in the pursuit supposed to be free to every
American citizen,-the pursuit of happiness. The humble old farmhouse
is discarded, and a smart, modern country-house put up. Walks and
roads are made and graveled; trees and hedges are planted; the rustic
old barn is rehabilitated; and, after it is all fixed, the uneasy
proprietor stands off and looks, and calculates by how much he has
missed the picturesque, at which he aimed. Our new houses undoubtedly
have greater comforts and conveniences than the old; and, if we could
keep our pride and vanity in abeyance and forget that all the world
is looking on, they might have beauty also.
The man that forgets himself, he is the man we like; and the dwelling
that forgets itself, in its purpose to shelter and protect its
inmates and make them feel at home in it, is the dwelling that fills
the eye. When you see one of the great cathedrals, you know that it
was not pride that animated these builders, but fear and worship; but
when you see the house of the rich farmer, or of the millionaire from
the city, you see the pride of money and the insolence of social power.
Machinery, I say, has taken away some of the picturesque features of
farm life. How much soever we may admire machinery and the faculty of
mechanical invention, there is no machine like a man; and the work
done directly by his hands, the things made or fashioned by them,
have a virtue and a quality that cannot be imparted by machinery. The
line of mowers in the meadows, with the straight swaths behind them,
is more picturesque than the "Clipper" or
"Buckeye" mower, with its team and driver. So are the
flails of the threshers, chasing each other through the air, more
pleasing to the eye and the ear than the machine, with its uproar,
its choking clouds of dust, and its general hurly-burly. |
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Sometimes the threshing was done in the open air, upon a broad rock,
or a smooth, dry plat of greensward; and it is occasionally done
there yet, especially the threshing of the buckwheat crop, by a
farmer who has not a good barn floor, or who cannot afford to hire
the machine. The flail makes a louder thud in the fields than you
would imagine; and in the splendid October weather it is a pleasing
spectacle to behold the gathering of the ruddy crop, and three or
four lithe figures beating out the grain with their flails in some
sheltered nook, or some grassy lane lined with cedars. When there are
three flails beating together, it makes lively music; and when there
are four, they follow each other so fast that it is a continuous roll
of sound, and it requires a very steady stroke not to hit or get hit
by the others. There is just room and time to get your blow in, and
that is all. When one flail is upon the straw, another has just left
it, another is halfway down, and the fourth is high and straight in
the air. It is like a swiftly revolving wheel that delivers four
blows at each revolution. Threshing, like mowing, goes much easier in
company than when alone; yet many a farmer or laborer spends nearly
all the late fall and winter days shut in the barn, pounding doggedly
upon the endless sheaves of oats and rye. |
When the farmers made "bees," as they did a generation or
two ago much more than they do now, a picturesque element was added.
There was the stone bee, the husking bee, the "raising,"
the "moving," etc. When the carpenters had got the timbers
of the house or the barn ready, and the foundation was prepared, then
the neighbors for miles about were invited to come to the
"raisin'." The afternoon was the time chosen. The forenoon
was occupied by the carpenter and the farm hands in putting the sills
and "sleepers" in place ("sleepers," what a good
name for the those rude hewn timbers that lie under the floor in the
darkness and silence!). When the hands arrived, the great beams and
posts and joists and braces were carried to their place on the
platform, and the first "bent," as it was called, was put
together and pinned by oak pins that the boys brought. Then pike
poles were distributed, the men, fifteen or twenty of them, arranged
in a line abreast of the bent; the boss carpenter steadied and guided
the corner post and gave the word of command,-"Take holt,
boys!" "Now, set her up!" "Up with her!"
"Up she goes!" When it gets shoulder high, it becomes
heavy, and there is a pause. The pikes are brought into requisition;
every man gets a good hold and braces himself, and waits for the
words. "All together now!" shouts the captain; "Heave
her up!" "He-o-he!" (heave-all,-heave),
"he-o-he," at the top of his voice, every man doing his
best. Slowly the great timbers go up; louder grows the word of
command, till the bent is up. Then it is plumbed and stay-lathed, and
another is put together and raised in the same way, till they are all
up. Then comes the putting on the great plates,-timbers that run
lengthwise of the building and match the sills below. Then, if there
is time, the putting up of the rafters.
In every neighborhood there was always some man who was especially
useful at "raisin's." He was bold and strong and quick. He
helped guide and superintend the work. He was the first one up on the
bent, catching a pin or a brace and putting it in place. He walked
the lofty and perilous plate with the great beetle in hand, put the
pins in the holes, and, swinging the heavy instrument through the
air, drove the pins home. He was as much at home up there as a squirrel.
Now that balloon frames are mainly used for houses, and lighter sawed
timbers for barns, the old-fashioned raising is rarely witnessed.
Then the moving was an event, too. A farmer had a barn to move, or
wanted to build a new house on the site of the old one, and the
latter must be drawn to one side. Now this work is done with pulleys
and rollers by a few men and a horse; then the building was drawn by
sheer bovine strength. Every man that had a yoke of cattle in the
country round about was invited to assist. The barn or house was
pried up and great runners, cut in the woods, placed under it, and
under the runners were placed skids. To these runners it was securely
chained and pinned; then the cattle-stags, steers, and oxen, in two
long lines, one at each runner-were hitched fast, and, while men and
boys aided with great levers, the word to go was given. Slowly the
two lines of bulky cattle straightened and settled into their bows;
the big chains that wrapped the runners tightened, a dozen or more
"gads" were flourished, a dozen or more lusty throats urged
their teams at the top of their voices, when there was a creak or a
groan as the building stirred. Then the drivers redoubled their
efforts; there was a perfect Babel of discordant sounds; the oxen
bent to the work, their eyes bulged, their nostrils distended; the
lookers-on cheered, and away went the old house or barn as nimbly as
a boy on a hand-sled. Not always, however; sometimes the chains would
break, or one runner strike a rock, or bury itself in the earth.
There were generally enough mishaps or delays to make it interesting.
In the section of the State of which I write, flax used to be grown,
and cloth for shirts and trousers, and towels and sheets, woven from
it. It was no laughing matter for the farm-boy to break in his shirt
or trousers, those days. The hair shirts in which the old monks used
to mortify the flesh could not have been much before then in this
mortifying particular. But after the bits of shives and sticks were
subdued, and the knots humbled by use and the washboard, they were
good garments. If you lost your hold in a tree and your shirt caught
on a knot or limb, it would save you.
But when has any one seen a crackle, or a swingling-knife, or a
hetchel, or a distaff, and where can one get some tow for strings or
for gun-wadding, or some swingling-tow for a bonfire? The
quill-wheel, and the spinning-wheel, and the loom are heard no more
among us. The last I knew of a certain hetchel, it was nailed up
behind the old sheep that did the churning; and when he was disposed
to shirk or hang back and stop the machine, it was always ready to
spur him up in no uncertain manner. The old loom became a hen-roost
in an out-building; and the crackle upon which the flax was
broken,-where, oh, where is it?
When the produce of the farm was taken a long distance to
market,-that was an event, too; the carrying away of the butter in
the fall, for instance, to the river, a journey that occupied both
ways four days. Then the family marketing was done in a few
groceries. Some cloth, new caps and boots for the boys, and a dress,
or a shawl, or a cloak for the girls were brought back, besides news
and adventure, and strange tidings of the distant world. The farmer
was days in getting ready to start; food was prepared and put in a
box to stand him on the journey, so as to lessen the hotel expenses,
and oats were put up for the horses. The butter was loaded up
overnight, and in the cold November morning, long before it was
light, he was up and off. I seem to hear the wagon yet, its slow
rattle over the frozen ground diminishing in the distance. On the
fourth day toward night all grew expectant of his return, but it was
usually dark before his wagon was heard coming down the hill, or his
voice from before the door summoning a light. When the boys got big
enough, one after the other accompanied him each year, until all had
made the famous journey and seen the great river and the steamboats,
and the thousand and one marvels of the far-away town. When it came
my turn to go, I was in a great state of excitement for a week
beforehand, for fear my clothes would not be ready, or else that it
would be too cold, or else that the world would come to an end before
the time fixed for starting. The day previous I roamed the woods in
quest of game to supply my bill of fare on the way, and was lucky
enough to shoot a partridge and an owl, though the latter I did not
take. Perched high on a "spring-board" I made the journey,
and saw more sights and wonders than I have ever seen on a journey
since, or ever expect to again.
But now all this is changed. The railroad has found its way through
or near every settlement, and marvels and wonders are cheap. Still,
the essential charm of the farm remains and always will remain: the
care of crops, and of cattle, and of orchards, bees, and fowls; the
clearing and improving of the ground; the building of barns and
houses; the direct contact with the soil and with the elements; the
watching of the clouds and of the weather; the privacies with nature,
with bird, beast, and plant; and the close acquaintance with the
heart and virtue of the world. The farmer should be the true
naturalist; the book in which it is all written is open before him
night and day, and how sweet and wholesome all his knowledge is!
The predominant feature of farm life is New York, as in other States,
is always given by some local industry of one kind or another. In
many of the high, cold counties in the eastern centre of the State,
this ruling industry is hop-growing; in the western, it is grain and
fruit growing; in sections along the Hudson, it is small-fruit
growing, as berries, currants, grapes; in other counties, it is milk
and butter; in others, quarrying flagging-stone. I recently visited a
section of Ulster County, where everybody seemed getting out
hoop-poles and making hoops. The only talk was of hoops, hoops! Every
team that went by had a load or was going for a load of hoops. The
principal fuel was hoop-shavings or discarded hoop-poles. No man had
any money until he sold his hoops. When a farmer went to town to get
some grain, or a pair of boots, or a dress for his wife, he took a
load of hoops. People stole hoops and poached for hoops, and bought,
and sold, and speculated in hoops. If there was a corner, it was in
hoops; big hoops, little hoops, hoops for kegs, and firkins, and
barrels, and hogsheads, and pipes; hickory hoops, birch hoops, ash
hoops, chestnut hoops, hoops enough to go around the world. Another
place it was shingle, shingle; everybody was shaving hemlock shingle. |
In most of the eastern counties of the State, the interest and profit
of the farm revolve about the cow. The dairy is the one great
matter,-for milk, when milk can be shipped to the New York market,
and for butter when it cannot. Great barns and stables and
milking-sheds, and immense meadows and cattle on a thousand hills,
are the prominent agricultural features of these sections of the
country. Good grass and good water are the two indispensables to
successful dairying. And the two generally go together. Where there
are plenty of copious cold springs, there is no dearth of grass. When
the cattle are compelled to browse upon weeds and various wild
growths, the milk and butter will betray it in the flavor. Tender,
juicy grass, the ruddy blossoming clover, or the fragrant, well-cured
hay, make the delicious milk and the sweet butter. Then there is a
charm about a natural pastoral country that belongs to no other. Go
through Orange County in May and see the vivid emerald of the smooth
fields and hills. It is a new experience of the beauty and
effectiveness of simple grass. And this grass has rare virtues, too,
and imparts a flavor to the milk and butter that has made them famous.
Along all the sources of the Delaware the land flows with milk, if
not with honey. The grass is excellent, except in times of protracted
drought, and then the browsings in the beech and birch woods are a
good substitute. Butter is the staple product. Every housewife is or
wants to be a famous butter-maker, and Delaware County butter rivals
that of Orange in market. Delaware is a high, cool grazing country.
The farms lie tilted up against the sides of the mountain or lapping
over the hills, striped or checked with stone walls, and presenting
to the eye long stretches of pasture and meadow land, alternating
with plowed fields and patches of waving grains. Few of their
features are picturesque; they are bare, broad, and simple. The
farmhouse gets itself a coat of white paint, and green blinds to the
windows, and the barn and wagon-house a coat of red paint with white
trimmings, as soon as possible. A penstock flows by the doorway, rows
of tin pans sun themselves in the yard, and the great wheel of the
churning-machine flanks the milk-house, or rattles behind it. The
winters are severe, the snow deep. The principal fuel is still wood,
-beech, birch, and maple. It is hauled off the mountain in great logs
when the first November or December snows come, and cut up and piled
in the wood-houses and under a shed. Here the axe still rule the
winter, and it may be heard all day and every day upon the wood-pile,
or echoing through the frost-bound wood, the coat of the chopper
hanging to a limb, and his white chips strewing the snow. |
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Many cattle need much hay; hence in dairy sections haying is the
period of "storm and stress" in the farmer's year. To get
the hay in, in good condition, and before the grass gets too ripe, is
a great matter. All the energies and resources of the farm are bent
to this purpose. It is a thirty or forty day's war, in which the
farmer and his "hands" are pitted against the heat and the
rain and the legions of timothy and clover. Everything about it has
the urge, the hurry, the excitement of a battle. Outside help is
procured; men flock in from adjoining countries, where the ruling
industry is something else and is less imperative; coopers,
blacksmiths, and laborers of various kinds drop their tools, and take
down their scythes and go in quest of a job in haying. Every man is
expected to pitch his endeavors in a little higher key than at any
other kind of work. The wages are extra, and the work must
correspond. The men are in the meadow by half-past four or five in
the morning, and mow an hour or two before breakfast. A good mower is
proud of his skill. He does not "lop in," and his
"pointing out" is perfect, and you can hardly see the ribs
of his swath. He stands up to his grass and strikes level and sure.
He will turn a double down through the stoutest grass, and when the
hay is raked away you will not find a spear left standing. |
The Americans are-or were-the best mowers. A foreigner could never
quite give the masterly touch. The hayfield has its code. One man
must not take another's swath unless he expects to be crowded. Each
expects to take his turn leading the band. The scythe may be so
whetted as to ring out a saucy challenge to the rest. It is not good
manners to mow up too close to your neighbor, unless you are trying
to keep out of the way of the man behind you. Many a race has been
brought on by some one being a little indiscreet in this respect. Two
men may mow all day together under the impression that each is trying
to put the other through. The one that leads strikes out briskly, and
the other, not be outdone, follows close. Thus the blood of each is
soon up; a little heat begets more heat, and it is fairly a race
before long. It is a greatly ignominy to be moved out of your swath.
Hay-gathering is clean, manly work all through. Young fellows work in
haying who do not do another stroke on the farm the whole year. It is
a gymnasium in the meadows and under the summer sky. How full of
pictures, too!-the smooth slopes dotted with cocks with lengthening
shadows; the great, broad-backed, soft-cheeked loads, moving along
the lanes and brushing under the trees; the unfinished stacks with
forkfuls of hay being handed up its sides to the builder, and when
finished the shape of a great pear, with a pole in the top for the
stem. Maybe in the fall and winter the calves and yearling will hover
around it and gnaw its base until it overhangs them and shelters them
from the storm. Or the farmer will "fodder" his cows
there,-one of the most picturesque scenes to be witnessed on the
farm,-twenty or thirty or forty milchers filing along toward the
stack in the field, or clustered about it, waiting the promised bite.
In great, green flakes the hay is rolled off, and distributed about
in small heaps upon the unspotted snow. After the cattle have eaten,
the birds-snow buntings and red-polls-come and pick up the crumbs,
the seeds of the grasses and weeds. At night the fox and the owl come
for mice.
What a beautiful path the cows make through the snow to the stack or
to the spring under the hill!-always more or less wayward, but broad
and firm, and carved and indented by a multitude of rounded hoofs.
In fact, the cow is the true pathfinder and pathmaker. She has the
leisurely, deliberate movement that insures an easy and a safe way.
Follow her trail through the woods, and you have the best, if not the
shortest, course. How she beats down the brush and briers and wears
away even the roots of the trees! A herd of cows left to themselves
fall naturally into single file, and a hundred or more hoofs are not
long in smoothing and compacting almost any surface.
Indeed, all the ways and doing of cattle are pleasant to look upon,
whether grazing in the pasture, or browsing in the woods, or
ruminating under the trees, or feeding in the stall, or reposing upon
the knolls. There is virtue in the cow; she is full of goodness; a
wholesome odor exhales from her; the whole landscape looks out of her
soft eyes; the quality and the aroma of miles of meadow and pasture
lands are in her presence and products. I had rather have the care of
cattle than be the keeper of the great seal of the nation. Where the
cow is, there is Arcadia; so far as her influence prevails, there is
contentment, humility, and sweet, homely life. |
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Blessed is he whose youth was passed upon the farm, and if it was a
dairy farm, his memories will be all the more fragrant. The driving
of the cows to and from the pasture, every day and every season for
years,-how much of summer and of nature he got into him on these
journey! What rambles and excursions did this errand furnish the
excuse for! The birds and birds'-nests, the berries, the squirrels,
the woodchucks, the beech woods with their treasures into which the
cows loved so to wander and to browse, the fragrant wintergreens and
a hundred nameless adventures, all strung upon that brief journey of
half a mile to and from the remote pastures. Sometimes a cow or two
will be missing when the herb is brought home at night; then to hunt
them up is another adventure. My grandfather went out one night to
look up an absentee from the yard, when he heard something in the
brush, and out stepped a bear into the path before him. |
Every Sunday morning the cows were salted. The farm-boy would take a
pail with three or four quarts of coarse salt, and, followed by the
eager herd, go to the field and deposit the salt in handfuls upon
smooth stones and rocks and upon clean places on the turf. If you
want to know how good salt is, see a cow eat it. She gives the true
saline smack. How she dwells upon it, and gnaws the sward and licks
the stones where it has been deposited! The cow is the most
delightful feeder among animals. It makes one's mouth water to see
her eat pumpkins, and to see her at a pile of apples is distracting.
How she sweeps off the delectable grass! The sound of her grazing is
appetizing; the grass betrays all its sweetness and succulency in
parting under her sickle.
The region of which I write abounds in sheep also. Sheep love high,
cool, breezy lands. Their range is generally much above that of
cattle. Their sharp noses will find picking where a cow would fare
poorly indeed. Hence most farmers utilize their high, wild, and
mountain lands by keeping a small flock of sheep. But they are the
outlaws of the farm and are seldom within bounds. They make many
lively expeditions for the farm-boy,-driving them out of mischief,
hunting them up in the mountains, or salting them on the breezy
hills. Then there is the annual sheep-washing, when on a warm day in
May or early June the whole herb is driven a mile or more to a
suitable pool in the creek, and one by one doused and washed and
rinsed in the water. We used to wash below an old gristmill, and it
was a pleasing spectacle,-the mill, the dam, the overhanging rocks
and trees, the round, deep pool, and the huddled and frightened sheep.
One of the features of farm life peculiar to this country, and one of
the most picturesque of them all, is sugar-making in the maple woods
in spring. This is the first work of the season, and to the boys is
more play than work. In the Old World, and in more simple and
imaginative time, how such an occupation as this would have got into
literature, and how many legends and associations would have
clustered around it! It is woodsy, and savors of the trees; it is an
encampment among the maples. Before the bud swells, before the grass
springs, before the plow is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is
the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of
winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the
day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New
England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal equinox,
beginning a week or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten
days after. As the days and nights get equal, the heat and cold get
equal, and the sap mounts. A day that brings the bees out of the hive
will bring the sap out of the maple-tree. It is the fruit of the
equal marriage of the sun and the frost. When the frost is all out of
the ground, and all the snow gone from its surface, the flow stops.
The thermometer must not rise above 38 or 40 by day, or sink below 24
or 25 at night, with wind in the northwest; a relaxing south wind,
and the run is over for the present. Sugar weather is crisp weather.
How the tin buckets glisten in the gray woods; how the robins laugh;
how the nuthatches call; how lightly the thin blue smoke rises among
the tree! The squirrels are out of their dens; the migrating
water-fowls are streaming northward; the sheep and cattle look
wistfully toward the bare fields; the tide of the season, in fact, is
just beginning to rise.
Sap-letting does not seem to be an exhaustive process to the trees,
as the trees of a sugar-bush appear to be as thirty and as long-lived
as other trees. They come to have a maternal, large-waisted look,
from the wounds of the axe or the auger, and that is about all.
In my sugar-making days, the sap was carried to the boiling-place in
pails by the aid of a neck-yoke and stored in hogsheads, and boiled
or evaporated in immense kettles or caldrons set in huge stone
arches; now, the hogshead goes to the trees hauled upon a sled by a
team, and the sap is evaporated in broad, shallow, sheet-iron pans,-a
great saving of fuel and of labor.
Many a farmer sits up all night boiling his sap, when the run has
been an extra good one, and a lonely vigil he has of it amid the
silent trees and beside his wild hearth. If he has a sap-house, as is
now so common, he may make himself fairly comfortable; and if a
companion, he may have a good time or a glorious wake.
Maple sugar in its perfection is rarely seen, perhaps never seen, in
the market. When made in large quantities and indifferently, it is
dark and coarse; but when made in small quantities-that is, quickly
from the first run of sap and properly treated-it has a wild delicacy
of flavor that no other sweet can match. What you smell in freshly
cut maple-wood, or state in the blossom of the tree, is in it. It is
then, indeed, the distilled essence of the tree. Made into syrup, it
is white and clear as clover-honey; and crystallized into sugar, it
is as pure as the wax. The way to attain this result is to evaporate
the sap under cover in an enameled kettle; when reduced about twelve
times, allow it to settle half a day or more; then clarify with milk
or the white of an egg. The product is virgin syrup, or sugar worthy
the table of the gods.
Perhaps the most heavy and laborious work of the farm in the section
of the State of which I write is fence-building. But it is not
unproductive labor, as in the South or West, for the fence is of
stone, and the capacity of the soil for grass or grain is, of course,
increased by its construction. It is killing two birds with one
stone: a fence is had, the best in the world, while the available
area of the field is enlarged. In fact, if there are ever sermons in
stones, it is when they are built into a stone wall,-turning your
hindrances into helps, shielding your crops behind the obstacles to
your husbandry, making the enemies of the plow stand guard over its
products. This is the kind of farming worth imitating. A stone wall
with a good rock bottom will stand as long as a man lasts. Its only
enemy is the frost, and it works so gently that it is not till after
many years that its effect is perceptible. An old farmer will walk
with you through his fields and say, "This wall I built at such
and such a time, or the first year I came on the farm, or when I
owned such and such a span of horses," indicating a period
thirty, forty, or fifty years back. "This other, we built the
summer so and so worked for me," and he relates some incident,
or mishap, or comical adventures that the memory calls up. Every line
of fence has a history; the mark of his plow or his crowbar is upon
the stones; the sweat of his early manhood put them in place; in
fact, the long black line covered with lichens and in places
tottering to the fall revives long-gone scenes and events in the life
of the farm.
The time for fence-building is usually between seed-time and harvest,
May and June; or in the fall after the crops are gathered. The work
has its picturesque features-the prying of rocks; supple forms
climbing or swinging from the end of the great levers; or the
blasting of the rocks with powder, the hauling of them into position
with oxen or horses, or with both; the picking of the stone from the
greensward; the bending, athletic forms of the wall-layers; the snug
new fence creeping slowly up the hill or across the field, absorbing
the windrow of loose stones; and, when the work is done, much ground
reclaimed to the plow and the grass, and a strong barrier erected. |
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It is a common complaint that the farm and farm life are not
appreciated by our people. We long for the more elegant pursuits, or
the ways and fashions of the town. But the farmer has the most sane
and natural occupation, and ought to find life sweeter, if less
highly seasoned, than any other. He alone, strictly speaking, has a
home. How can a man take root and thrive without land? He writes his
history upon his field. How many ties, how many resources, he
has,-his friendships with his cattle, his team, his dog, his trees,
the satisfaction in his growing crops, in his improved fields; his
intimacy with nature, with bird and beast, and with the quickening
elemental forces; his cooperations with the clouds, the sun, the
seasons, heat, wind, rain, frost! Nothing will take the various
social distempers which the city and artificial life breed out of a
man like farming, like direct and loving contact with the soil. It
draws out the poison. It humbles him, teaches him patience and
reverence, and restores the proper tone to his system. |
Cling to the farm, make much of it, put yourself into it, bestow your
heart and your brain upon it, to that it shall savor of you and
radiate your virtue after your day's work is done!
"Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well
to thy herds.
"For riches are not forever; and doth the crown endure to every generation?
"The hay appeareth, and the tender grass showth itself, and
herbs of the mountains are gathered.
"The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of
the field.
"And thou shalt have goat's milk enough for thy food, for the
food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens." |
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