FARM DRUDGERY: A MYTH 45 



be done in my head while at work. To say, how- 

 ever, that the quantity of actual labor I now do 

 is an important factor in the total would be to 

 exaggerate. As time goes on I find myself doing 

 less and less of it. In winter and spring I run the 

 incubator and tend the growing birds, do the meat 

 canning and pickling, make lard and sausage, and 

 otherwise bear a hand at the butchering. In sum- 

 mer I do most of the fruit and vegetable canning. 

 I make butter, and feed the hens once a day some 

 days a job that is a matter of five minutes feed- 

 ing and fifteen or twenty studying the hens. In 

 sugar time I collect the sap for boiling. I harvest 

 and cure the tobacco, pick strawberries and other 

 small fruits, and keep the records. But checking 

 over the week just ended (as these words are writ- 

 ten), I have not put in, altogether, a full hour at 

 farm work, unless you count gunning for pheas- 

 ants, or picking water cress and wild mushrooms, 

 as work. I could easily work the farm in my spare 

 time. But I could not simultaneously write a book 

 about it. And I do not think it would be much fun. 

 You remember my saying we have hired two 

 days a week more time on the farm this year. This 

 was not needed to keep the work caught up. We 

 saw that an extra two days would pay off in big- 

 ger and better crops and sales. There are times 

 when, in the schedule outlined above, the work 

 will pile up to a disadvantageous degree. A sea- 



