CHAPTER VI
TO THE TEACHER
We hear so much of the drudgery of farm life, of its dreariness, and meagre living that this chapter, aside from its picture of cheer and plenty, should be made the text for a good deal of comment upon the many other phases of farm life that make for the fullest kind of existence; namely, the independence of the farmer; the vast and interesting variety of his work; his personal contact with domestic animals, his fruit-trees, garden, and fields of grain; his intimate acquaintance with the weather; his great resourcefulness in meeting insect plagues, blights, and droughts; his out-of-door life that makes him strong and long-lived, etc., etc.
If you are a country teacher it is one of your great missions to show the boys that they should stay upon the farm, or rather that the farm is a good place to stay on for life; if you are a city teacher it should be your mission to head many a boy countryward for life with the understanding that it requires more sound sense and resourcefulness to make a successful farmer than it does to make a bank president.
FOR THE PUPIL
Page 46
end of the outdoors: The fall plowing, even the digging of the ditches—all the work in the soil is about over by Thanksgiving when the ground begins to freeze.
Page 47
crib-house: Where the writer lived as a boy the corn was husked and left in the ear and stored in long, narrow houses built of beveled slats spaced about half an inch apart to allow the wind free play, but like the thin slats of a shutter so arranged that the rain ran down and, except in a driving wind, did not wet the grain.
“spring-house”: Spring-houses took the place of modern ice-chests, being little cupboard-like houses well ventilated and screened, built near the farmhouse and usually over a spring of water that kept the milk and other contents cool.
battened: Is this a “land” term or a “sea” term? What does it mean? Look it up and report.
the swallows: These were the barn swallows—the beautiful swallows with the long, finely-forked tail. You will always know them on the wing by the brown breast and fine forked tail.
worm-fence: A worm-fence is built of rails laid one on top of the other, running zigzag, each corner held together by two upright stakes, set in the ground and crossed just above the next-to-the-top rail. The top rail is laid in the crotch of the two stakes.
turn-o’-lane: name of a very excellent old-fashioned apple that got its name from the fact that the original tree of the kind grew at a turn of the lane—the writer does not know whose lane.
Page 48
double-hived: It is customary to cover beehives with newspapers, then slip an outside box down over papers and all to keep the swarm from the cutting cold winds of winter. Bees are frequently brought into the cellar for the winter in northern latitudes.
put on an extra coat, and turned their collars up about their ears: What does the writer mean?
changed their roost from the ridge-pole: Turkeys roost high; but the ridge-pole of the crib-house used to be too cold in the dead of winter, so they would change to the more protected apple-tree, still roosting high, however.
pearmain: name of a “summer” apple in New Jersey; of a winter apple in this section of Massachusetts.
garden of box: the box bush.
bleeding-hearts: an old-fashioned flower; a low shrub with pendent blossoms shaped like a heart.
creeper: the Virginia creeper, or woodbine.
Page 49
“template” stove: from template or templet, a strip of sheet iron used in boiler-making. A simple long stove made of a single piece of sheet iron, bent like an inverted U, and riveted to a cast iron bottom. It had a single door in the front; and burnt pieces of wood about two feet long. Often called “tenplate” stove.
Page 50
seven of us alone: seven brothers and sisters in the writer’s family.
flats: Describe the outside appearance of a city “flat,” and also the inside if you have ever been in a flat. Is it like a farmhouse?
kitchenette: What kind of a kitchen is a kitchenette?
neither a farm nor a city home: By which the writer means a farm in the ordinary sense of land cultivated for a living. His is a home only, with several acres around it, largely in woods and grass.
Page 51
“Bucksy”: the invented name of a little Indian hero about whom the writer tells stories to his little boys.