He
Has Taken Service On A Farm Well Away From These Delirious Delights,
And, Says He, 'I've Been Offered $25 A Month To Work In A Bakery At New
York.
But you don't get me to no New York, I've seen this place an' it
just scares me,' His strength is in the drawing of hay and the feeding
of cattle.
Winter life on a farm does not mean the comparative idleness
that is so much written of. Each hour seems to have its sixty minutes of
work; for the cattle are housed and eat eternally; the colts must be
turned out for their drink, and the ice broken for them if necessary;
then ice must be stored for the summer use, and then the real work of
hauling logs for firewood begins. New England depends for its fuel on
the woods. The trees are 'blazed' in the autumn just before the fall of
the leaf, felled later, cut into four-foot lengths, and, as soon as the
friendly snow makes sledging possible, drawn down to the woodhouse.
Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an
arch, is never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when
the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed
with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some
idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons.
Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the
boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you
pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls
together.
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