Feb. 4.—Have you ever noticed how the sounds carry on some winter mornings? One day last week we had a few hours when I felt as if I were eavesdropping on the whole countryside. The air was very still and judging from the way the smoke fell to the ground it was very light. When I went out to do the chores I was struck at once by the clearness with which I could hear things going on. I could hear the neighbours talking to their cattle and somewhere about a mile away an angry man was reasoning with an impenitent pig. I could hear what he said to the pig and what the pig said to him, and judging by what the pig said I think the man must have kicked him while pouring swill into the trough. Every sound started an echo that went bounding over the fields. I could hear a train moving on the Michigan Central Railroad twelve miles away and almost imagined I could hear the people in the town three miles off frying their breakfast bacon and grumbling about the high cost of living. I understand that the carrying quality of the air is due to its being thin or rarefied. According to the papers some inventor has increased the power of the telephone by having the air in the receiver warmed by some new device. The principle on which he works is probably the same as prevailed on this particular morning. The ease with which sounds carried was due to the condition of the atmosphere and that reminds me that at other times the air must be very heavy and dead. Anyway, I know that there are days when I cannot make a boy in the next room hear that the wood-box is empty even when I yell at the top of my voice. Now that must be due to the condition of the atmosphere, and I have noticed that the best way to overcome the difficulty is to warm things up.
Feb. 7.—There seems to be something wrong about Mr. Glendinning's criticism of telephone and rural free delivery at the recent meeting of the Grange. It seems like flying in the face of progress at a time when every one is insisting that we might as well be dead as unprogressive. I have avoided the telephone myself, chiefly because I got tired of it in the city and did not want any one to call me up to talk things over unless I wanted to talk. I have always sympathised with the British in their attitude to the telephone. The best families may have one in the kitchen for ordering supplies, but they refuse to be disturbed by it themselves. When a Britisher goes to his home he wants it distinctly understood that his home is his castle, and when he takes up the drawbridge and lets down the portcullis no one can intrude on him without his permission. I have a very distinct recollection of having an interview with an English business man, and while we were talking the telephone bell on his desk began ringing. Instead of stopping to hear what was wanted he reached out and took the receiver from the hook and placed it on his desk so as to stop the ringing. He would not allow any one to reach him by the telephone any more than he would by letting them enter through the door of his office while he was keeping an engagement. As a contrast to this I remember an advertising man in New York telling me with much glee of being refused admission to a business man and instead of being discouraged he went to the nearest telephone booth, called the man up, submitted his proposition, and got his order. We people of the new world lack the necessary poise to use the telephone properly. When the bell rings we are consumed with curiosity until we know who is speaking and what is wanted. If we could learn the British method of using the telephone only when we need it, instead of using it for gossiping and all kinds of nonsense, and instead of being slaves to its constant ringing, there would be no good ground for objecting to it. There are still a few things that we can learn from the people in the Old Country.
Feb. 9.—What are signs of spring, anyway? when I was out doing the chores this morning the thermometer stood at ten below zero and yet there was a feeling of Spring in the air. The sky and the sunshine had a look of spring and the sparrows were all chirping as if they were talking of the good times coming. There was a hen cackling over a new-laid egg that would be worth its weight in silver on the table of a Toronto millionaire, and about a dozen Leghorns had found their voices again and were making a feeble attempt to scratch in a forkful of straw that lay in the sunshine. And yet, as I have just said, it was ten below zero. When I got up to shake down the coal-stove about seven o'clock it was eighteen below. A little while later when the sun was peeping over the horizon I looked again, and after scratching away the hoarfrost that was settling on everything I found the mercury standing at twenty below. But, of course, the air was so dry I didn't mind it. Still, I didn't stand before the thermometer to think things over. I preferred standing as close to the stove as I could get. It did not seem much like spring just then. Come to think of it, I guess the signs of spring vary considerably. I remember years ago that a man who had moved to Dakota wrote home saying that it was beginning to look like spring out there. He said that the snow was already down to the tops of the windows.
Feb. 11.—I have fully made up my mind that another winter will not catch me so unprepared as this one did. Early in the fall I shall get all my agricultural reports and farm bulletins warmly pitted, so that when I want a basketful of them to help spend the long winter evenings I shall know where to get them. Now when I go to look one up it usually cannot be found, or if it is to be found it is badly frostbitten and weather-beaten. Besides, when they are lying about loose they are in danger of being used for all sorts of things. The other day I wanted to read up on the question of early potatoes, but the pages of the Vegetable-growers' Report were missing. When I finally tracked them down I found that I would have to stand on my head to read them where they had been pasted upside down over a knothole in a shed. The bulletin on Alfalfa is missing too. I remember sitting on the fence reading it one day last fall, and in all probability I left it there while I went to do something else. Of course I intended to pick it up on my way back to the house. We all intend to do things like that, but somehow we seldom do. When I find it next spring it will probably be after a cow has stepped on it. It is a shame to do things in this way, for those bulletins are really valuable. I would feel worse about it, only I know that a lot of good farmers are just as careless about such things as I am.
Feb. 14.—When I read the articles in the papers telling about the high cost of living I am moved to ask why thrifty housekeepers do not buy their supplies in the old-fashioned way and get along without paying the charges and profits of the packers and retailers. Last fall I bought a dressed hog, hunted up a good recipe for curing bacon, ham, and salt pork, and proceeded to prepare the winter supply. I also got a chart showing just how a pig should be cut up for curing, and followed all the directions carefully. By devoting a few hours to the job the winter pork was laid in at a cost of nine cents a pound. The only objection to this method was that the meat was so much better than the kind we had been buying at the stores for from twenty-three to twenty-seven cents a pound that we ate more of it. Encouraged by this experiment, I bought half of a fat heifer—like the man in the old joke we "killed half a cow"—and proceeded to cure the meat according to good recipes. As in the case of the pork, I got plans and specifications for cutting the beef, and followed the blue-print carefully. The beef is turning out as successfully as the pork, and the cost was nine cents a pound for the forequarter and ten cents a pound for the hindquarter. In this weather the roasts and steaks keep without curing of any kind, and besides a supply of corned beef and soup joints there was plenty of material for mincemeat and the old-fashioned "forcemeat" that could be found in any farmhouse in the days when people cured their own meat. This is a luxury I have looked for in vain in even the best restaurants. It is made by chopping together fresh beef and suet, moulding it in little cakes, and putting it away to set. This sounds as if it were a kind of Hamburg steak, but it is not. It has a flavour entirely its own. I imagine it is more like pemmican than anything else. And I mustn't forget the piece that is being spiced and dried. It seems to be coming on fine, and I have no doubt it will be just as good as the kind they charge thirty cents a pound for in the stores. I know all this sounds very carnivorous, but I don't care. I am not a believer in vegetarianism. I cannot forget that Cain was the first vegetarian on record, and we all know how bloodthirsty he got from living on fruits and salads. And the moral of it all is that the cost of living would not be so high if people did not turn over to the butchers and bakers and canners the work of curing and preparing their foodstuffs.
Feb. 16.—I see that there is much being written about the advisability of giving "demonstrations" of proper beef-raising in various parts of the country so that the farmers may be induced to raise better stock. If the men who have this in mind will also arrange to give "demonstrations" of how to sell the finished product at a reasonable profit they may be able to accomplish something worth while.
Feb. 17.—Now is the time to think about reforestation. If you are thinking of planting in the woodlot now is the time to apply to the Department of Forestry for trees. I understand it is a case of first come first served, and you cannot get your order in too early. Of the thousand and eighty trees I planted last spring about eight hundred survived the heat and drouth of last summer. That is sufficiently encouraging to make me apply for twice the number of trees this spring, so as to finish the job of reforestation that I set out to do. The conditions last summer were greatly against the little trees, and yet the result was satisfactory. Above all things, I wish to impress on those who undertake work of this kind the necessity of following to the letter the instructions given by the department. They seem to be about perfect. The way in which the sod is turned up and left beside the tree not only keeps down the weeds and grass, but I noticed in the fall that the hole made by lifting the sod filled in with leaves, and in that way gave the trees a perfect mulching for the winter. I expect to find them all looking fine and hearty when the snow melts in the spring.
Feb. 18.—Well, the farming operations for this year have commenced in earnest. With the Ontario Government acting as my hired man, I propose to do a few things this summer—and to tell all about them. If we succeed we will try to be modest and if we fail we will be frank. What says the poet?
"'Tis not in mortals to command success;
But we'll do more, Sir James: we'll deserve it."
This is how it happened: When I undertook to handle a farm by myself I was immediately confronted by the problem of labour. How was I to get a good, capable hired man to help me with my work? Not being able to solve the problem to my own satisfaction, I wrote to Mr. C. C. James, Commissioner of Agriculture, and put the matter up to him somewhat as follows:—