In Pastures Green

His course of lectures should be the most important in the college. His work would be to prepare us for a future in which the heavy burdens of the world will be borne by educated men who will understand their rights as well as their work. With such men behind the ploughs, the day of predatory big business will soon come to an end. The men who feed the world will no longer be the slaves of the cunning. But it is still so much easier to make a living by cleverness and cunning that it is hard to believe that the hard work of farming is to be taken over by men of education who will know their own worth and the worth of their work. It is a glorious dream, but the world will have to make more progress in philosophy than it has in science before it comes true. When my scientific friends finally completed their work and left me I felt lonesome and homesick for the outer world for the first time since coming back to the land. In spite of their enthusiasm about farming and farm work, I felt that they belonged to that world rather than to the world in which I am sojourning.

April 16.—"I've given up the danged farm," said a callow youth this morning in response to a civil question about the progress being made with the spring work. At present he is putting in his time as the village cut-up, and when it really becomes necessary for him to work he'll get a job as cook on a gravel train or as oiler in a garage. He'll live in a boiled horse boarding-house and fill himself with husks and other deleterious substances. The "danged" farm isn't swift enough for him.

Unfortunately there are many in his class, though they express themselves differently. They are travelling the school and college route to the over-crowded professions or going to the city in search of a nice, clean job. "The danged farm" isn't good enough for them.

At this point the observer usually begins to pound the pulpit, but I am in no mood to usurp the prerogatives of the preacher. If fellows of this sort want to leave the country for the city, let them go. There are altogether too many useless people in the country now. There are men spoiling land who ought to be putting in their time as dock-wallopers or at some city occupation that requires no brains. At the same time, there are a lot of struggling doctors, lawyers, preachers, and business men in the cities who have just the education and brains needed to make the best kind of farmers. Don't make any mistake about it. The farming of the future is going to be the best of the learned professions, and the only one in which a man of brains and character can find scope for his individuality and abilities. Farming is about the only man's job left.

The city has changed as much as the country in the last twenty-five years, and it is no longer the place for a man of wholesome ambition. The change is due to two things—machines and organisation. The machines have made trades a thing of the past, and organisation is doing away with individual enterprise. There are no more trades where skilled artisans work in wood or metal or cloth or leather. There are machines now that do the work, and men and women can get jobs to wait on them. You cannot realise what it means to be the slave of such a machine unless you have been one or have seen such slaves at work. Some years ago I was conducted through one of the largest shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts, by its proud proprietor. I could not help noticing the clock-like regularity with which the men and women who were at work performed every motion. In making a shoe there are seventy-two separate operations, and each is made by a different operator with a machine. No one person in all that factory could make an entire shoe. The skill of each individual was confined to one operation, such as sewing in the tongue or pegging on the heel. While we were passing through the factory and the proprietor was explaining to me how things were done, not one of those workers paused or looked up. I commented on their unflagging industry. The proprietor smiled. "I have figured out to a nicety just how many operations can be made in a day by each machine, and have the speed regulated to perform just that number of operations. Of course, the operator can stop the machine if not ready to go on, but he is docked at the end of the day for each operation he misses."

I never was so near being an anarchist in my life as I was while the memory of that incident was fresh in my mind. The workers in that factory were not simply slaves to their employer, but to merciless machines. And that is only a sample of what you can find in any industry that has been perfected along modern lines. In the factories work has none of the charm it had for the old-time artisan who performed every operation himself. It is simply machine-driven drudgery, and the man who thinks that kind of work preferable to work on a farm deserves no better employment.

So much for the physical workers. The case of the mental workers, while apparently better, is really worse, but the subject is a dangerous one to handle. Still enough may be said to suggest some lines of thought. The fact that almost all business enterprises are conducted by organisations or companies has entirely changed the positions of all employees, from office-boy to the president of the company. To parody Tennyson: "The individual withers, and the company is more and more." The shareholders, through their directors, adopt a money-making policy for their company, and that policy must be enforced, no matter how heartless it may be. For instance, I know of a lithographing company which has the excellent rule that it pays for only the work done by its employees. That seems all right, doesn't it? Well, one day I was lunching with the superintendent of manufacture and he was very much depressed. I asked what was troubling him, and he explained:

"One of my best printers has had a hard winter of it on account of sickness in his family. He is an entirely sober, industrious fellow, but I know he has had a hard time to make both ends meet. Well, he had to stay out one day this week to bury his little girl, and when pay-day came he was docked for that day."

"Surely if you called the attention of the president to the case he would have fixed things."

"He couldn't do a thing. It is a rule of the company. All the president could do would be to do what I have done myself—open the man's envelope and put in the pay out of his own pocket."

Now, it is safe to say that not one pious shareholder of that company would justify the treatment that faithful printer would have received if the superintendent had not been foolishly soft-hearted, and yet, as a shareholder, each one would share in the increased dividends caused by such savings. That is only a trivial example of the results of organisation. Ruthless methods of competition and of increasing profits are not adopted from choice by the executive officers, but from necessity. As individuals they would not stoop to do the things they do as officers of a company. Above everything else the company must be successful. No one asks it to be charitable, or kind, or even moral. But every one insists that it must be efficient. As John D. Rockefeller, the greatest of all business organisers, blandly informed the Senatorial Commission which was investigating his business methods: "I am merely a clamourer for dividends." He had nothing to do with the methods by which dividends were secured. What he wanted was dividends, and the employee who failed to provide them would not be long in receiving his discharge.

In the country matters are different. Such machinery as is used only serves to relieve farm work of its drudgery. Seedtime and harvest still have their olden charm. As for organisation, it will be many years before the farmers have enough of it to enable them to get the just returns from their labour. In all their work and business dealings the farmers are their own masters and need not be driven, either in matters of work or conscience. And the way scientific farming is developing the farmer's work can give as much scope to his brain power as any of the learned professions. Neither are the financial returns to be despised. A successful farmer can make as good an income as the average city man. When these things are understood as they should be I expect to see an exodus of intelligent men from the cities to the country, where they can develop themselves physically, mentally, morally, and financially. Indeed, a day may come when we shall hear people preaching: "Boys, don't leave the city."

April 19.—It is just possible that the hen has been studied too much from a utilitarian or practical point of view. If allowed to pass the succulent broiler stage she is regarded simply as an egg-producing machine, and after a useful life she sinks unsung into the pot-pie or fricassee. If instead of being born a hen she had been born a water wagtail, or some bird of no economic value, her charms and social habits would be embalmed in a Saturday editorial. Her cunning little ways would be closely observed and set down with delicate humour, and exceptional literary grace would be used to give her a niche in The Globe's gallery of nature friends. These thoughts were in my mind as I went out of the house this morning, and, as luck would have it, the first thing that caught my eye was a Buff Orpington that was pursuing the early worm to its lair in a flower bed. The fact that that flower bed is placed where no flower bed should be, and was so placed against my earnest protests, reconciled me to what was going on. I decided at once that the time was favourable for a study of the hen. Betaking myself to a sunny corner of the coal box, I sat down and began to observe. The hen was of robust habit, but apparently in thorough athletic training. The soil in which she was scratching was of the kind that would be given a low classification by a constructive engineer or a Parliamentary investigating committee. It was a sandy loam, and I had to mind my eyes whenever she scattered it in my direction. The first outstanding fact that I gathered was that this particular hen had a definite method of procedure to which she adhered with remarkable singleness of purpose. Lowering her head, she examined the ground first with one eye and then with the other. Then she stepped forward with the confident air of a baseball star going to the bat, scratched once with one foot and then twice with the other. If she scratched first with the right foot she would scratch twice with the left, and vice versa. Then she would step back and carefully examine the field of her depredations. If no worm was in evidence she would step forward briskly and repeat the performance. As I had never read this in any book or paper dealing with the hen and her habits, I took out my notebook and began to secure material for a future scientific article. But I was doomed to disappointment. At this moment a door bulged open and an apparition with a broom swooped down on that hen. She fled squawking, and I discreetly slipped around the corner of the house. I might have found it hard to explain why that hen hadn't been shooed away.

There is a wild plum tree in blossom in the woods, the trees are showing faintly green, the meadows and wheatfields are vivid and, even though the weather is chilly, summer is really started. A change of the wind will make everything all right. At the same time no one has any grudge against the raw east wind that has been blowing lately, for it brought much-needed rain. When it comes to furnishing wet weather the east wind is very dependable. I knew it was blowing on Sunday morning when I wakened and heard the rain pelting on the tent. Being drowsy, I decided to stay where I was until the shower passed, but after a couple of hours made up my mind that my case was much like that of the man who sat on the bank of a river and waited for the water to flow past so that he could cross. I should have been there for a day or more if a healthy appetite had not forced me out. It was a glorious rain and will do much to start the crops towards a prosperous harvest. Oats and barley are already showing through the ground and the battle with the weeds has commenced in the garden. The sky signs are now for fine weather and others besides the birds are feeling chirpy. I don't care if I never run to catch a street car again as long as I live.

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

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

"How?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking of hens in gardens reminds me that about the meanest job the hired man and I tackled this spring was changing the location of the garden and moving the chicken wire that was around it. That stuff could kink, twist, bend, break, and otherwise make itself objectionable in more ways than anything I ever had to deal with. Why doesn't some one invent a kind of chicken wire that can be moved when necessary? Of course, we moved it, by brute strength, but now that it is in place again it looks as if it had been rammed through a corn-sheller and then tramped on by the cows. Still it will turn hens, and perhaps when the wild cucumber vines and gourds begin to climb over it, it will not look so bad. And while on the subject of fences let me "put myself on record," as the politicians say, as believing that inventors still have a fruitful field ahead of them inventing farm fences. Rail fences are going out entirely because of the scarcity of timber, and board fences are going for the same reason. There are many kinds of wire fences on the market, all guaranteed to be horse-high and skunk-tight. Most of them are all right for a year or two and then they begin to sag and wires begin to break. Patching and stretching them when they begin to give out is no job for a man with a feverish temper. Besides, it is work that has to be done when farm work is beginning to rush, and a man in a hurry is usually irritable. And beyond all this I wonder what on earth people are going to do when they finally have to take down useless wire fences and put up new ones. You can't burn the old ones or roll them into reasonable compass. I doubt if the collectors of old iron can do anything with them. So what is to be done? The wire fences on the average Canadian farm would clutter up acres of ground if taken off to make way for new ones, and a piece of unemployed fence wire lying in the grass is about the trippingest, scratchiest thing a man can run into accidentally on a dark night or drive into with a team in the daytime. I think our inventors would make more money if they turned their attention from flying machines to wire fences for a while. This country is always going to need wire fencing, and millions of miles of it, and what is needed is a kind that will be serviceable and movable and that can be done away with when useless.

Word has just come that the trees are at the railway station, and that means more hustle. The thousand I planted in the woodlot last year did so well that this spring I got ambitious to finish the job of reforestation, and I sent for two thousand and five hundred. Wishing to get as great a variety as possible, so that some would be sure to thrive. I asked for white pine, Scotch pine, locust, catalpa, white elm, white maple, walnut, red oak, and chestnut. They are sending the whole list, and, as last year's work proved to me that planting three hundred trees a day is good, heavy work for a man and a boy, I expect we shall be fairly busy. In fact, as I think of the seeding and the trees, I feel like parodying Shakespeare and protesting lest

That last word hardly applies in my case, but there are a lot of people in the country who claim to like work, so I shall let it stand for their benefit. I wonder if it would not be possible for the Forestry Department to devise a method of planting trees at a different season of the year. If they can be planted only in the spring, during seeding-time, the work of reforestation will never make much progress among the farmers of the country. Few of them have enough help to enable them to do the real spring work without taking on other jobs like this. And they are all the more reluctant to undertake the work because of the belief that a man who plants trees will never get any returns from his work. Of course that point of view is all wrong, but it is very prevalent. A man who plants trees for the benefit of his descendants is doing as much for them as if he put money in the bank for their use. It is just as wise an investment as any other that a man can make. But I am not going to argue out that question in such a busy time as this. If I think of it I'll take it up in the winter when there is little to occupy our minds. Just now I shall plant trees, and explain afterwards. Moreover, I had better get started or people will think I am guilty of "terminological inexactitudes" when I talk about being busy. This is no time to be sitting in the house pounding at a typewriter. I should be outside, getting sun-burned and hustling about the thousand and one things that are to be done. If the wonderful things that will be happening in all nature during the next few days are to be sympathetically described this spring, some one else will have to be assigned to the job. As far as I am concerned there is nothing in sight but work, work, work.

May 9.—Two thousand five hundred trees are altogether too many for one farmer to undertake to plant in one season. There are too many other things to do at the time when the trees should be planted. Yet, nevertheless, and notwithstanding, the two thousand five hundred that I ordered are planted to the last seedling, and we still live. Moreover, that job of reforestation is done, and all that remains to do is to put a permanent fence around the woodlot and let nature take her course. There are twenty-four varieties of trees in that three acres, and if this year's planting does as well as last year's there should be a fine coppice before we are much older. While the government trees are doing well, I am especially interested to find that the whole woodlot is now swarming with sugar maple seedlings. The fact that the cattle have been kept out for the past couple of years has given the natural growth a chance, and there are places where the little maples are growing as thickly as they can push from the ground. I think it would be a fair estimate to say that there are ten maple seedlings to every seedling I have planted. Between this year and last year we have planted over thirty-five hundred trees, so the outlook for a future timber limit is fairly rosy, though I have no doubt wise people are right in saying that "I'll never live to see any good come from all this work." That all may be, but there is a kind of satisfaction in doing some work that you know you will never derive any benefit from. It is a pleasant variation from the usual method of doing work from which you are expecting great profits and then getting bumped.

The expert who sent me the pasture mixture to sow in the oat field did not furnish plans and specifications for getting the stuff into the ground. Some of the seeds seemed to be nothing but fluff and fuzz, and when I tried to sow them with a hand seeder they took the wings of the morning and I don't know where they landed. Being anxious to confine the stuff I was sowing to Middlesex county, I waited for a dead calm, in the hope that if I got the stuff floating over the field some of it would gradually settle down where it was needed. There were seven varieties of seed in the mixture, each of a different specific gravity, and I don't think it would be possible for any one to distribute it properly over the ground unless he put it in the same as the women folk sometimes put in garden seeds—by poking each seed into the ground with the finger. As that process would be rather slow, and would be likely to take up the rest of the summer, I decided against it. The hand-seeder had to be discarded, too, because I couldn't get the seed to feed through it evenly. After many trials and false starts, I finally had to go back to the old system of broadcasting and scatter the stuff by hand. Yesterday was an ideal day for such work. We had a series of thunderstorms, and for about an hour before each storm there was a lull:

I was able to sift the seed over the ground in the still air, but after each storm the mud got stickier and heavier until it seemed that I was pulling up about as much oats at each step as I was putting in of grass seed. Sowing may be an artistic job, but as I thought it over I couldn't just remember how Millet represented the feet of the peasant in his celebrated picture. After yesterday's experience I feel safe in assuming that "The Sower" was not wearing patent leather pumps.

The orchard is certainly looking fine. The blossoms are just opening and on most of the trees they are plentiful enough to satisfy any one. Mr. Clement came over last week and sprayed them thoroughly with lime sulphur and arsenate of lead. The purpose of this was to destroy the insects that feed on the blossoms and to kill the leaf-curl worms. It was surprising to find how many of these creatures were commencing their ravages before the spraying had begun. I should never have noticed them in making a casual observation, but Mr. Clement ferreted them out for me and showed how they were feeding fat on my profits from the orchard. While he went on with the spraying I went poking around looking for matters of interest and found that the Baldwins were showing signs of some kind of blight. The leaves and blossoms were blackening as if they had been touched by frost. Mr. Clement said that he had never before observed anything like it. It seemed to be something new. A couple of days later he wrote to tell me that in Elgin county the lower branches of the Baldwins are affected in the same way and as yet no one has been able to offer an explanation. But I guess I hadn't better say much about this. Apparently I was the first to discover this blight, and it would be just like these scientific men to name it after me. I freely admit that they have a lot to get even with me for, but I hope that they will not take any such fiendish revenge as that. I don't want to go down to history in the same class with the man Bright who first developed Bright's disease. I rather wish I hadn't noticed that blight.

When I heard that morels were being found in the neighbourhood I simply couldn't restrain myself. The call of the fungus is something I cannot resist. Although I was tired enough from sowing that grass seed and dragging my feet out of the mud I put off milking for half an hour to make a search through the long grass by the roadside. Although I had once or twice enjoyed a dish of morels I had never managed to find a specimen, but last night luck was with me and I got seven beauties. When I tasted them before I regarded them as a rather feeble substitute for mushrooms, but they had a tang of their own that appealed to my palate. This time they were served differently and proved a supreme success. Some one had heard that to be at their best morels should be stewed in cream, and that was the way we had them for breakfast. While altogether different, they were every bit as delicious as the finest mushroom, and from now on if any morel within a radius of a mile escapes me it will be because I have become so practical a farmer that I no longer take any interest in the enjoyments of life. I have never seen morels on the bill of fare of any restaurant, but I can assure the epicures that they are missing something.

May 11.—Say, it isn't fair of the banks to spring an important move like the Royal-Trader merger when a fellow is too busy with his spring work to give it proper attention. They might have known that I would want to look into the business in a careful and leisurely way, and here they go and put through their deal when I am all fussed up with other things. But that is a way they have. Most of the privileges they enjoy they got when no one was watching them. But we'll get around to them again one of these fine days, and perhaps, as Shakespeare says: