A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba

by M. G. C. Hall

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June 18.

I am afraid our letters will not be so interesting as the novelty wears off: the monotony of our life may begin to pall upon us. We hardly ever go two miles beyond the farm; to take our neighbours at the tent their letters or parcels brought out from town, is about the limit to our wanderings. We did drive one of the waggons to our neighbour Mr. Boyle to fetch home some oats the other night, and we also have been into town to pay our respects to the Governor and his wife. We happily don't want much outside attraction, for we have so much to do on the farm. The men work us pretty hard, I can tell you; as, besides all our indoor work, we have had three afternoons cutting potatoes for seed, until our hands are too awful to look at, and the water is so hard that we never shall get them a decent colour again. Some "white elephants" potatoes, planted three weeks ago (thirty in number we cut into 420 pieces) already make a great show, and will want banking up next week. About ten acres of ground close to the house have been reserved and are called "the garden," in which have been planted turnips, flax, beet-root, lettuce, tomatoes, and potatoes; in short, all the luxuries of the season. But I am afraid none will be ready before we leave, if we carry out our idea of going to Colorado early in August.

We have been craving for rain, and at last, luckily, had a delightful shower a few days ago, which has freshened us up and will make things grow. There is no grass as yet above four inches in height, and this time last year they were hay-making. The men are beginning to fear there will be none; but with a little warm weather and a certain amount of rain everything grows as if by magic, so we may still hope to have a good season.

Only very few of the garden-seeds have made their appearance, which is disappointing after all the trouble they were; but the wild flowers are beginning to come out on the prairie, small bushes of wild roses are all over; there are also very pretty sunflowers, a tree maiden-hair, several different vetches, sisters, yellow-daisies, &c.; many we cannot name, indigenous to this country we conclude.

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June 26.

We quite feel as if we had been here years instead of about five weeks; and though it was prophesied before we left England that, after turning the house up-side down and making the men very uncomfortable with our cleanings, we should then go on strike, it has not been altogether fulfilled. We certainly did try to clean up a bit, but we still help in housework, and have to do as the servants at home. If we expect visitors, or on a Sunday, put on a tidy gown; otherwise we generally live in the oldest of frocks (which are more or less stained with either mud or the red paint with which we have been painting the roofs of both the stable and the labourers' house), very big aprons, sleeves to match, and our sun-bonnets. E—— has concocted for herself a thin blue-and-white shirt, and as she generally lives with her sleeves tucked up, her arms are getting quite brown and sunburnt. Our boots are the only things we do not much like cleaning, they get so soon dirty again; and we have come to the happy conclusion that unblacked boots have a "cachet" that blacked boots have not. When we first arrived the men promised to do them for us every Sunday; which promises, like so many, have partaken of the nature of pie-crusts.

We are both of us delighted to have come, the whole experience is so new, and what we couldn't have realised in England; and I am sure, in spite of the bouleversement of the bachelor regime, it is a great pleasure to the men we are here. Our Winnipeg acquaintances tell us that A—— is quite a changed man, so cheery and even bumptious, and that everything is now "What we do at the farm."

It is all very well, however, in the summer; if obliged to stay through the winter, it would be quite another "pair of shoes." The thermometer often registers forty degrees of frost, though the effects of this extreme temperature in the dry exhilarating atmosphere is not so unpleasant as might be imagined, but the loneliness and dreariness of the prairie with two or three feet of snow would be appalling. The cold is so great that you have to put on a buffalo coat, cap, and gloves, before you can touch the stove to light the fire, and notwithstanding the coal stove which is always kept going in the hall to warm the up-stairs room (through which the pipe is carried), the water in buckets standing alongside gets frozen.