PHASES OF FARM LIFE. 259 



patches of waving grain. Few of their features are 

 picturesque ; they are bare, broad, and simple. The 

 farm-house gets itself a coat of white paint, and green 

 blinds to the windows, and the barn and wagon-house 

 a coat of red paint with white trimmings, as soon as 

 possible. A penstock flows by the doorway, rows of 

 tin pans sun themselves in the yard, and the great 

 wheel of the churning machine flanks the milk-house, 

 or rattles behind it. The winters are severe, the 

 snow deep. The principal fuel is still wood beech, 

 birch, and maple. It is hauled off the mountain, in 

 great logs when the first November or December 

 snows come, and cut up and piled in the wood-houses 

 and under a shed. Here the axe still rules the winter, 

 and it may be heard all day and every day upon the 

 wood-pile, or echoing though the frost-bound wood, 

 the coat of the chopper hanging to a limb and his 

 white chips strewing the snow. 



Many cattle need much hay ; hence in dairy sec- 

 tions haying is the period of " storm and stress " in 

 the farmer's year. To get the hay in, in good condi- 

 tion, and before the grass gets too ripe, is a great 

 matter. All the energies and resources of the farm 

 are bent to this purpose. It is a thirty or forty day 

 war, in which the farmer and his " hands " are pitted 

 against the heat and the rain, and the legions of 

 timothy and clover. Everything about it has the 

 urge, the hurry, the excitement of a battle. Outside 

 help is procured ; men flock in from adjoining coun- 

 ties, where the ruling industry is something else, and 



