44 A FARMER'S YEAR 



So on the whole I face the new farming year with a somewhat 

 lighter heart, although it is true that I am again hampered with over 

 fifty acres of foul, half-starved land on Baker's Farm. There is a 

 more hopeful feeling in the air, but whether the season will end in 

 prosperity and, glorious possibility, something in the bank that 

 can actually be drawn and spent, or with a swollen deficit, I know 

 not. The reader, if such a man there be who is willing to ac- 

 company me from spring to winter in the adventures of the year, 

 can form his own opinion. At least, I promise him that the 

 whole truth shall be told ; nothing shall be glozed over, or made 

 to seem better than in reality it is. 



As I write, the fear takes me that such a journal as I propose 

 of agricultural and countryside events, and of reflections arising out 

 of them, may prove monotonous ; but if so, doubtless it will be my 

 skill that is to seek, since nature is never monotonous. Even the 

 history of a single hedgerow daily recorded would be full of interest 

 to those who cared about hedgerows. But if my artless tale is 

 dull, I trust that to some extent it may prove useful to those who 

 are weary of text-books and yet wish to learn something about 

 rural ways and life upon the land in this era of dreadful depression, 

 when the fate of British agriculture hangs quivering in the balance. 

 At the worst, a year spent moving in fancy from field to field and 

 watching all that lives and grows therein, with the wind and the 

 wet in his face, and the smell of the earth and the corn in his 

 nostrils, can scarcely be unwholesome to the town-held reader. 



