The Bright Side of i^arm Life. 



By Mrs. G. R. Smith, at Farmers' Institute, Franklin, N. Y. 



Doubtless many think a pastor's wife does see the bright side 

 of farm life. She is invited to the farm homes to eat warm sugar, 

 strawberry-short-cake, Thanksgiving turkey or any other thing 

 which is specially nice, and knows nothing of the hard work. 

 All this is certainly a very bright side of my life; but there is no 

 kind of work which falls to the lot of the farmer's wife or 

 daughter that I have not done. From picking up chips — yes, and 

 picking potato bugs, driving cows from the pasture and working 

 grafting wax for father while he grafted his apple trees when 

 I was a little girl — to caring for an invalid mother and doing the 

 work for a herd of ten cows, when milk was set in shallow pans. 

 Fve been through it all. I know how tiresome the milk work is 

 on the sultry summer morning when one has enthusiasm for 

 nothing. But even the great pile of milk pans to be washed had 

 a touch of brightness for me. They helped me partly forget my 

 anxiety for my mother, and so they rested me. They have a 

 bright side for you too. It is that you do not use them. Present- 

 day methods of dairying are much easier. 



There was a summer vacation later, when Mr. Smith and I ran 

 a little farm of 20 acres and were as happy as kings and much 

 more independent, and left it in the fall richer by the winter sup- 

 ply of fruit and vegetables. So you see I've seen all sides of 

 farm life. 



We often lament that we have not as good schools or as long 

 terms as town people. I'm not going to admit that you have 

 not as good teachers as we, for I taught a country school myself 

 for four terms. Afterward I taught in a large town and I found 

 that it took my village pupils ten months of their school year 



