178 A FARMER'S YEAR 



MAY 



May i. --By common and time-consecrated repute the first of 

 May is the beginning of summer, and, unless tradition lies, as 

 seems probable, at that date our forefathers used to picnic in the 

 open and dance about poles wreathed with flowers, although it 

 must be remembered that under the Old Style their May-day 

 fell two weeks later than our own. They would scarcely do it 

 now, for nine May-days, or, for the matter of that, nine Mays out 

 often are distinguished by abominable and frigid weather, though 

 primroses and, where they grow wild, daffodils are plentiful enough. 

 As for the may itself, it rarely appears in any quantity until the 

 end of the month. 



To-day we are ploughing and carting stones off the light glebe 

 land for the roads. I suppose that for hundreds of years the 

 farmers of this land have taken from it an annual crop of stones, 

 and still, season by season, more appear. Where do they all come 

 from, and why do they continue to work up to the top without 

 appreciably lowering the level of the land ? No doubt geologists 

 can explain this phenomenon, but to an ordinary ignoramus like 

 myself it is a mystery. Indeed, the existence on much the same 

 level and in close proximity of stretches of soil sandy in nature and 

 full of flint, and other stretches stiff at top with a substratum of dense 

 blue clay, seems difficult to understand. I suppose that it has to 

 do with the laying bare of various strata in far past ages by the 

 action of floods or of the ocean. 



To-day, also, we have carted twenty-five coomb of beans, sold 

 at i$s. 6d. a coomb, an advance of two shillings on last year's 

 price. These beans have to be placed at Loddon, six miles 



