WHAT OTHERS SA^ . 455 



THE FUN OF FARMING. 



Some men think if they only lived on a farm, they would be happy. 

 But of course agriculture in books is nicer than it is in the country. I 

 suppose somebody has been telling them that the farmer is the only in- 

 dependent man on the face of the earth, and that the life of the tiller of 

 the soil is one of peace and happiness, with none of the cares of business 

 or the wearing rush of the city to drive him to premature old age and 

 insane asylums. I have known some farmers, and have a slight idea 

 of how much work farmers do. 



I will begin about the ist of January. That is the laziest time of 

 the year for them. If our farmer keeps cows, he is obliged to be up 

 early in the morning, to get the milking done, and if he keeps a hired 

 man, and tries to wake him up in the morning, you would think he had 

 taken chloroform. He sleeps so hard he might be kidnapped and given 

 a bath without waking him up. After milking, they go into the barn, to 

 clean the stables. Does any one know how cold a pitchfork handle is 

 on a cold winter's morning.'' It is colder than the supervisor or trustee 

 he voted for, on the morning after election. After he has hold of that 

 pitchfork about five minutes he begins to wish his parents were born 

 on different sides of the globe and had never met each other. Now 

 comes the business of watering horses, cows, and all. A farmer never 

 suffers for want of exercise. After dinner, he has time to speak to his 

 wife, while the hired man chops the wood. 



If there is nothing else to do after dinner, there is always one re- 

 source, sprouting potatoes. If there is one thing more delightful than 

 another, it is to sit upon a reversed peck measure in the cellar and sprout 

 potatoes, hour after hour. 



Plowing must be begun as soon as the frost is out ot the ground, 

 and with this real commencement of the farming season, the hard work 

 begins. They have been resting all winter to prepare for it ! All 

 through the lovely month cf June they expend their time plowing corn. 

 Ask a farmer of the beauties of a pastoral life about half an hour before 

 noon, while he is navigating through a forty-acre field, and he will get 

 mad ; and if you tell him the sun is nearer in winter than in summer, he 

 will find it hard to keep his temper. He knows how near the sun is in June 

 while playing croquet with a hoe handle and weeds. The potato bug has 



