"Did you think you could plant them in the morning?" asked her mother. "You know, dear, the ground has to be made ready first; it takes a little time,—it may be several days before you can plant."
That was another surprise. Margery had thought she could begin to sow the seed right off.
But this was what had happened. Early the next morning, a man came driving up to the cottage with two strong white horses; in his wagon was a plough. I suppose you have seen ploughs, but Margery never had, and she watched with great interest, while the man and her father took the plough from the cart and harnessed the horses to it. It was a great, three-cornered piece of sharp steel, with long handles coming up from it, so that a man could hold it in place. It looked like this:—
"I brought a two-horse plough because it's virgin soil," the man said. Margery wondered what in the world he meant; it had not been cultivated, of course, but what had that do with the kind of plough? "What does he mean, father?" she whispered, when she got a chance. "He means that this land has not been ploughed before; it will be hard to turn the soil, and one horse could not pull the plough," said her father.
It took the man two hours to plough the little strip of land. He drove the sharp end of the plough into the soil, and held it firmly so, while the horses drew it along in a straight line. Margery found it fascinating to watch the long line of dark earth and green grass come rolling up and turn over, as the knife passed it. She could see that it took real skill and strength to keep the line even, and to avoid the stones. Sometimes the plough struck a hidden stone, and then the man was jerked almost off his feet. But he only laughed, and said, "Tough piece of land; it will be a lot better next year."
When he had ploughed, the man went back to his cart and unloaded another farm implement. This one was like a three-cornered platform of wood, with a long, curved, strong rake under it. It was called a harrow, and it looked like the diagram on the next page.
The man harnessed the horses to it, and then he stood on the platform and drove all over the strip of land. It was fun to watch, but perhaps it was a little hard to do. The man's weight kept the harrow steady, and let the teeth of the rake scratch and cut the ground up, so that it did not stay in ridges.
"He scrambles the ground, father!" said Margery.
"It needs 'scrambling,'" laughed her father. "We are going to get more weeds than we want on this fresh soil, and the more the ground is broken, the fewer there will be."