“Well, you have something of an appetite yourself. A gallon of oats costs something, too. I’ll bet this man can’t feed and shoe and harness you for less than $200 a year! Let’s be glad this thing takes some of the work off our shoulders!”

“But I saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there came a jerk on the lines and “Get up!” and Tom put his mighty shoulders into the collar and pulled the load up to the shed, while the truck with a snort that sounded like a sneer moved on into the barn—just as if a repair bill for $273 was a very small matter.

Thomas was tired—as you might expect after a night on the market. The load sold for $106.95. It was a mixture of corn, apples and tomatoes. That looks right at first thought, but one year ago the corresponding load of about the same class of goods brought $143. That is about the way they have gone this season. Our prices are certainly lower, and every item of cost is higher. There can be no question about that, yet our friends who buy food are paying as much as they ever did. But for the truck we would be worse off than we are now. We never could handle our crop with the horses. It is more and more necessary to get the goods right into market promptly and with no stop. While the truck has become a necessity, let no man think that it works for nothing. Old Tom is right in saying that I have a bill for $273 for refitting the truck this year and putting it in shape for the season. That item alone will add quite a few cents to the cost of carrying each package. Some of the smaller farmers on well-traveled roads are selling at roadside markets. This is a hard life, and includes Sunday work, and I understand that for some reason people are not buying such goods as they did. The retail trade is rarely satisfactory when one produces a fairly large crop. I think the plan for the future will mean a combination of farmers to open a store in the market town and retail and deliver their own goods co-operatively.

My back feels as if there were three hard knots in it. I must straighten them out by a change of occupation. I am going up on the hill to look at the apple picking for a time. Little Rose, barefooted and bareheaded, dressed in a pair of overalls, trots along with me. She eats two tomatoes on the way up, and then I find her a couple of mellow McIntosh. The dirt on the tomatoes has been transferred to her little face, and I think some of it follows the apple into her mouth. Oh, well, these scientists will probably find vitamines in dirt before they are done. We are picking Gravensteins today—big rosy fellows—some of the trees running 15 bushels or more. I planted a block of these trees as an experiment. Now I wish I had more of them. The last lot brought $5.25 per barrel. I do not care much for them for eating, but as baking apples they sell well. This year any big apple brings a fair price. For instance, that despised Wolf River has been our best seller. The boys own several trees of Twenty Ounce, which are bringing about $20 per tree this year. Cherry-top is going to Paterson this afternoon to put some of his apple money into a bicycle. I have told in past years how I gave my boys a few bearing apple trees and how they have bought others. These trees have given surprising returns. The larger boy is just starting for college, and his trees will go a long way toward paying expenses. The objection to giving such trees or selling at a low price is that the boy finds the income very “easy money.” It would be better for him to plant the young tree and stay by it till it comes in bearing. The only chemical I know of for extracting character out of money is warm sweat. I’d like to spend the day on the hills—here in the sunshine with the apples blushing on the trees and the grapes purpling on the walls and the clouds drifting over us. But that would never clean up those strawberries, and so little Rose and I go down on a load of apples—big Tom and Broker creeping down the steep hillside as if they realized that here was a job which the truck could not copy.

I got at those weeds once more. Philip had carried several bushels to the geese, and these wise birds make much of them. The big sow, too, stands chewing a big red root as a boy would chew candy. Nearby on a grassy corner little Missy has been tied out. She is a very proud little cow, for just inside the barn her yellow daughter lies in the straw—pretending to chew her small cud. We shall have to call this young lady Sippi to complete her mother’s name. Missy has given us a taste of real cream already. But here is a pull at my shoulder, and little Rose, her face washed and hair brushed, comes to lead me in to dinner. There will be 14 of us today. I wish you could make it 15. The food is all on the table, so we can see what there is to start with. Have some of this soft hash. That means a hash baked in a deep dish, with considerable liquid in it. You may think we live on hash, but a busy Saturday is a good time for working up the odds and ends. Then you can have boiled potatoes, boiled beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, bread and butter, baked apples and all the milk you want. We are all hearty eaters, and I figure that if I took my family to the restaurant in the city where I sometimes have my dinner, the bill would be about as follows:

Hash$4.20
Potatoes1.40
Beets1.40
Sweet corn3.60
Tomatoes1.40
Milk.90
Bread and butter1.40
Baked apples2.30
$16.60

That is a very low estimate of what this dinner would cost us. Now what would a farmer get at wholesale for what we have eaten? Not quite $1.30 at the full limit. Last week I ordered a baked apple and was charged 30 cents for it! But no matter what this dinner would cost elsewhere, it is free here, and I hope you will have another baked apple. Try another glass of milk. Our folks have a way of pouring some of that thick cream in when they drink it.

That dinner provided heart and substance to all of us. I am back at those berries, and Philip has come to help me. Our folks have stopped picking apples for the day and will cut sweet corn fodder—where the ears have been picked off. That will have to be our “hay” this winter. The women folks and a couple of the boys have started for town to do a little shopping. Philip and I have a pile of weeds here as large as a henhouse, and the strawberry plants as they come out of the tangle look better than I expected. A car has just rolled in with a family after apples. One well-groomed young man is viewing me appraisingly over his glasses. He is talking to the soft, fluffy young woman at his side. “Is that the Hope Farm man? A rather tough-looking citizen! Why does he do that very common work? He ought to hire that job done and get up out of that dirt!”

This young man will never know what it will mean next Spring when the vines are full of big red berries to know that he saved them and with his own labor turned them from failure to success. He probably never will know any such feeling—and that is his misfortune. This weed-pulling gets to be mechanical. It doesn’t require much thought and I have a chance to consider many things as we work. A short distance away is that patch of annual sweet clover. The plant we have been measuring is now 60 inches tall and still growing. The plants are seeding at different dates—some of them earlier than others. What a wonder this clover will be for those of us who have the vision to make use of it.