No, sir! Our business is to keep
ahead of Providence - to meet her with mixed farming. Are you interested
in mixed farming? Psha! Too bad you missed our fruit and vegetable show.
It draws people together, mixed farming does. I don't say Wheat is
narrowing to the outlook, but I claim there's more sociability and money
in mixed farming. We've been hypnotised by Wheat and Cattle. Now - the
cars won't start yet awhile - I'll just tell you my ideas.'
For fifteen glorious minutes he gave me condensed essence of mixed
farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making
sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of
all things, with proper devotion.
'What we want now,' he cried in farewell, 'is men - more men. Yes, and
women.'
They need women sorely for domestic help, to meet the mad rush of work
at harvest time - maids who will help in house, dairy, and chicken-run
till they are married.
A steady tide sets that way already; one contented settler recruiting
others from England; but if a tenth of that energy wasted on 'social
reform' could be diverted to decently thought out and supervised
emigration work ('Labour' does not yet object to people working on the
land) we might do something worth talking about.
