FARM DRUDGERY: A MYTH 47 



farm work. Nearly all the prejudice against it can 

 be traced to those who, raised as backwoods 

 drudges, have had the wit to escape to the city. 

 Wherever electric power, the internal combustion 

 engine, gas, and oil can penetrate and where can 

 they, where have they, not? drudgery can be rele- 

 gated to that limbo in which dwell the fabled lone- 

 liness and isolation of the farm. Of which it may 

 be said dogmatically that one of the real prob- 

 lems of a modern farm i*s how to get a little time 

 to yourself. What with the telephone and the auto- 

 mobile, country life near a large city is, as Frank 

 Sullivan said of life in the French Cabinet, not 

 unlike keeping house in a revolving door. 



However monotonous it can be, farm work 

 has compensations to be found nowhere else in 

 these times. There is great and fortifying satis- 

 faction in the assurance you can feed yourself and 

 your family. There is good mental and nervous 

 discipline in the tempo of the work, which must 

 be slow if it is to accomplish much: a good plough 

 team "moving seems asleep." And there is ever the 

 quiet elation that comes only from creative work. 

 One's own products take on new values. Even 

 spinach is highly palatable if you grow it yourself. 

 Unlike most so-called sports or adult games farm 

 work for home use is strictly non-competitive and 

 therefore the healthiest kind of exercise. And 

 while it may not tax the highest reaches of a human 



