In Pastures Green

by Peter McArthur

But the primroses and rainbows are not the only things that are made hard to see rightly because of "many inventions." It is no longer possible to see our fellow-men simply as men. Just ask any one to describe some man of his acquaintance for you. You will probably find that he will begin by telling you whether he is well off. Then he will tell you what political party he belongs to. After that he will tell you what church he attends. The man will possibly be described as well-to-do, a Grit and a Presbyterian. Now, that is not a description of a man. Wealth, partisanship, sectarianism are simply "inventions." A man may be a man for a' that.

"What's the trouble now?"

"The old hen stepped on a chicken."

"Well, wrap it up in a cloth and put it in a basket by the kitchen stove and see if it will get better."

Let me see. Where were we at? Oh, yes, we were trying to describe a man. How would it do to go back to Solomon's study of the matter? He said that man was made upright. "But they have sought out many inventions." Wouldn't we get a better idea of a man if he were described as upright, generous, good-natured, neighbourly? These are all qualities, not "inventions." But I do not think I ever heard a man described in that way. We all seem to think of the "inventions" first. It is just as hard to consider a man as a man as it is to consider a primrose as a yellow primrose.

As I read over what I have written I seem to discover a great truth. When a man has nothing else to say he naturally begins to moralise. But I am going to stop. The old hen is squawking and the little boy is calling. She is probably moralising, too, if the tone of her voice tells anything. She is probably saying that since the "invention" of incubators chickens are not what they used to be when she was young. And human children are more troublesome. It is a strange world that we live in and it is hard to get the right attitude towards it. But I think we shall make a great advance towards enjoying it when we realise that things are what they are and not what people imagine they are. The sunshine is good and the warm breeze is good and the flowers are good and the birds are good, and, if possible, for the rest of this glorious day I am not going to bother my head about what they may possibly be on a last analysis or what they perhaps stand for. I am weary of the "many inventions."

May 20.—If a man could only know as much before he starts a job as he does after it has been finished, work would be a great deal easier. I thought I had everything just right when starting to plant the new orchard, but I learned a few things. We planted cherry trees for fillers, and I thought it would be no trick to get them in right after the apple trees were planted. We made a fairly good job of planting the apple trees. Though the rows are not so straight that a rifle bullet would nick every tree, they are not so bad. Here and there one may be out an inch or two, but the stretched and marked wire kept us fairly straight in spite of the rolling ground. It is only when you look across the field corner-ways that you notice the little mistakes. But the great mistake was in imagining that if I got the apple trees in straight I should have no trouble putting in the fillers by sighting along the rows of apple trees. This had to be done by sighting along the rows that showed corner-ways, and, as they revealed all the mistakes of the apple-tree planting, these mistakes were multiplied in planting the cherry trees. After the first couple of rows of fillers had been put in, I thought they would help me in sighting, but matters kept getting worse steadily. As Nature has not fitted me with enough eyes to enable me to sight in six different directions at once, the problem was too deep for me. I know that we should have planted the fillers after each row of apple trees, and there were twenty-foot marks on the wire for that purpose, but nobody told me. When we found out it was too late to do things right, for the planted trees made it practically impossible to shift the wire for each row. So we put in the cherry trees as best we could, and I danced around like a hen on a hot griddle trying to sight in six different directions without delaying the work of planting. The result is not what you would call a fancy job of planting, but I have seen worse. In fact the trees are in better line than in most of the orchards I know of, but they should be right. Of course, the fillers will be cut out some time in the future and the orchard will then look all right, but I shall have to wait a good many years before it looks as I should like to have it.

Planting the young orchard was not the joyous job I had expected, for there was less hope in the work than I would have liked. The trees arrived in such condition that it seems hardly possible that even a decent percentage of them will live. The box in which they were packed was broken, most of the packing had fallen out, and they were as dry as last year's brush. They had been twelve days coming from Welland, and had been exposed to the hottest weather of the season. They might have been delivered with a wheel-barrow as quickly as they were delivered by the railways. People who saw them at the station advised me not to accept delivery, but I called up the nurseries and the manager asked me to try to save the trees. He advised soaking them over night, and then heeling them in a wet place. This was done, and with the help of two men who have had experience in planting we put in the trees according to the directions of the nurserymen. I was anxious to give the trees a chance, not only because I did not want to see so large a shipment destroyed, but because we have been preparing to plant this orchard for the past year. Last fall a clover sod was ploughed under, and preparations made to give the young orchard every chance. If I rejected the trees a whole year would be lost, and the work would have to be done over again. The nurserymen promised me fair treatment if I would plant the trees, and now I am waiting to see the result. Though the trees were thoroughly soaked before planting, ten days ago, and have had two good showers of rain since they were planted, I cannot find a bud that has even swollen. If they do not grow it will mean a lot of wasted work.

May 23.—Getting out to grass is certainly the event of the year for the animals on the farm. I know, because I have a strong fellow-feeling for them. When the sun begins to get warm, and the grass starts to grow, I get impatient for the time when I can fling myself at full length on the sod without being scolded for taking chances of catching cold. When the cows were allowed out for the first time they could hardly wait to go through the gate before they started to graze, and for a couple of hours they kept at it as if their lives depended on getting a good meal. But presently something stampeded the young cattle, and the whole bunch began running, bunting one another, and jumping around as if indulging in a foolish sort of sun dance to celebrate their freedom. When this was over, the red cow started on her annual inspection of the fences. The thorn hedge, woven with barbed wire, baffled her, as it did last year, and I thought everything was all right. The next time I looked she was in the clover field. The spring flood had loosened things around the government drain. After driving her out I fixed this break in the fence, only to find that she was in the field again. She had found a place where the wire fence had been cut to haul out wood and had managed to push through. Turning her out again I made a thorough job of mending this, and that ended the trouble. She made a complete round of the field, stuck her head over every fence and bawled, but that was all. Now I can go about my work without giving a thought to the fences. The red cow and I examined and tested them thoroughly on the first day and fixed them for the summer. Really, the red cow is a great help. If it were not for her I might be bothered with fences all season, but one day is enough. She examines the fences thoroughly and after she finds the weak spots I fix them up. If her calves take after her I shall be able to advertise a new strain of useful stock. No farmer should be without one of these fence-testing cows to help him keep his farm in shape and protect his crops.

For a few days everything was quiet in the pasture field, and then, all of a sudden, there was a noise like a general election. All the cattle began to bawl defiance. A big, slab-sided two-year-old steer began to lead the herd towards the line fence. He had his head down, his mouth open, and he walked catercorner, roaring like one of the bulls of Bashan. A neighbour had just turned out his cattle, and they were approaching the line fence, and putting up the same warlike bluff. I should have had more respect for the dehorned two-year-old and his war talk had it not been that on the previous evening I had seen him being prodded across the field by a sharp-horned little yearling heifer. He grunted and got out of her way like a fat man getting beyond the reach of a suffragette's elbow in a street-car rush. But he certainly did make an awful noise. I don't know why it is, but I always find something in the actions of cattle to remind me of politics. There is the same tendency to go in flocks, to make a wholly unnecessary amount of noise, and then to accomplish nothing. When the two roaring herds finally met at the line fence they merely stuck their noses through the wires and sniffed at one another for a few minutes, and then went back to pasture. The crisis was over.