To the hammock comes the odour of raspberry jam in the making. Owing to the dry weather the raspberries were not plentiful this year, but they are well-flavoured. The same report applies to currants, gooseberries, and all other small fruits. The prospect for apples is excellent. The trees are heavily loaded, and where they have been properly sprayed there will be a good yield. It seems incredible, and yet it is true, that in different parts of Ontario thousands of bushels of the best apples are allowed to rot every year because the farmers cannot get enough to pay for the labour of picking and marketing the fruit. Yet good apples are dear in the cities. Just where the trouble lies is not quite clear.
Of all the delights enjoyed by the occupant of the hammock, watching the sunsets is chief. This summer they have been unusually fine, owing to the storms that threatened and turned aside. Each evening has given a picture of marvellous splendour, ranging from light streaks of silvery cloud over blue skies of illimitable depth to masses of rose and gold. Sometimes the colours are confined to one glowing spot. At others they spread over the whole sky, varying in their shadings at each shifting of the clouds. To this splendour of the skies must be added the silvery grey of the oat and barley fields, and the cool green of the woods, shot with streaks of golden sunlight. Mountainous countries may show more stupendous effects, but the sunsets of the level reaches of central Ontario have a beauty that it would be hard to rival. And after the sunset the stars come out, and hours of waking dreams precede the hours of dreamless sleep that only the quiet country can give. It is all very good.
July 30.—There are no doubt many hot jobs on the farms during the summer months, but up to the present writing I have struck nothing hotter than cultivating corn in the still, humid hours of the early afternoon when a thunderstorm is gathering. As the green-headed flies are always at their worst just before a storm, they get the horse frantic, and her attempts to dislodge her tormentors with her hind feet are so disastrous to the growing hills of corn that a man's temperature goes up steadily until he makes a sweating, panting, howling exhibition of himself. These flies are said to be especially bad this summer, and one "grave and reverent seignior" told me that the ones that attacked his horses not only bit them, but took out chunks of flesh and flew away to the woods with them, where they could eat them at their leisure. But I have my doubts of that. I am beginning to suspect that real farmers take a delight in telling me whoppers, and otherwise imposing on my credulity. For instance, a man was telling me what a hearty feeder one of his horses is.
"Why," he said, "when she is pasturing, and makes up her mind that she wants to have a roll, she never stops eating. She lies down, still eating away, and rolls over and over, without ever missing a bite." Now, I leave it to the editor if that man wasn't stretching it a little bit. But to get back to hot jobs. I thought that my job of cultivating in the blazing sun was hot enough for any one, but I am told that a man who has never mowed away hay under a steel roof has no idea of what heat is. According to the accounts I have heard, it must be a trifle worse than mining borax in Death Valley, and that is said to be the hottest job that any human being ever undertook. But the corn job is hot enough for me.
Yesterday afternoon I was nearer to being "bushed" than I have been since undertaking to work a farm. I was pitching hay in the field—I am told it was native blue grass, and unusually heavy—and the coils were compact, and looked to have only about one forkful in each one. We were working at the gait of men who want to get a stack finished before a shower, and I thought I was good for anything that came along. But before evening I hadn't a word to say to any one. They could "josh" me all they wanted to, but I hadn't the energy to answer back. Every coil was bigger and heavier than the last, and the day kept getting hotter and the wind died down, and the weather got more threatening, until it seemed as if human nature couldn't stand more, but the rest of the gang didn't find out how tuckered I was. I managed to stick it out, but I am not anxious to repeat the experience. If a large plantigrade man had come along hunting for work while the trouble was in progress, he could have had any price he asked, but hired men are too scarce to be foot-loose at this time of the year. Oh, yes, I know I should be up-to-date and have a hay loader and hay fork, but any implement agent who reads this will be wasting his time if he comes and tries to sell them to me. I have noticed that a lot of farmers who are farming on about the same scale as I am keep themselves poor buying the latest improvements, and I am not ambitious to join their melancholy ranks. Improved implements are an excellent thing to have if one has enough work for them to do, but there are cases where the sensible thing is to be old-fashioned. Muscle is still cheaper than machinery for small jobs.
This experience started me meditating on hired men I have known. Where now can we find the equals of those wonderful workers who were known in "the short and simple annals of the poor" as "Bill the Cow" and "Three-fingered Jack, the Human Hayfork"? Bill used to laugh aloud at ordinary haycocks. What he wanted was young stacks, and he would heave them up whole, and was insulted if offered anything smaller than a barley fork to work with. And when hay forks were first introduced, did not Three-fingered Jack get all lit up at the fall fair and start on a rampage to find the agent who had sold the toys. He reeled up and down the one street of the village and "bellered like all Bashan," and breathed slaughter, and would not be comforted when he could not find the man who was spoiling the good old pastime of haymaking by introducing horse forks. Those men used to work from dawn until after dark on the longest days, and they hated a mid-day shower as badly as the men who hired them. But where are they now? For answer, let us cull a fitting threnody from Homer, mighty singer of heroes:
"They long since in earth's soft arms are reposing,
Afar from their own dear land, their native land—Lacedemon."
Instead of Lacedemon, read Scotland, or England, or Ireland. They died, and their methods of working died with them. If they could only come back, we would organise excursions and charge an admission fee to those who wished to see them at work. But we are living in another and no doubt a better age. Men do not work as they did, and could not if they wanted to. Compared with them, we are a degenerate race, even though we wear finely-laundered linen when we go to town, instead of donning paper collars and putting butter on our hair.
Of course, time is very valuable, and we are assured by all kinds of wise people that "Time is Money." Even The Farmer's Advocate has published articles telling what to do on rainy afternoons, so that no time may be lost. All this is no doubt very excellent, and far be it from me to say anything that might justify lazy people in wasting time, but I am still of the opinion that no man should work during the first few minutes after a summer shower. When everything in nature has been refreshed, he should try to breathe in a little of the refreshment himself. The air is so pure, and everything in the fields and woods so beautiful that it is positively invigorating to share in the joy by which we are surrounded at such times. Even the birds, though their broods may be hungry, stop for a chorus of song among the dripping leaves. Before the storm comes up all nature is parched and wilting, but after it has passed everything is throbbing with life. The corn and oats are a fresher green, and sparkle with countless jewels. It is at such times that life in the country is at its best, if we will only forget our cares and worries to enjoy it, even though only for a minute. The beauty of the world needs to be harvested and stored away in the memory just as carefully as the crops that are now causing us so much concern. The memory of what is beautiful should be as precious to us as full granaries.