In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

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!"