264 PHASES OF FARM LIFE. 



noses will find picking where a cow would fare poorly 

 indeed. Hence most farmers utilize their high, wild, 

 and mountain lands by keeping a small flock of sheep. 

 But they are the outlaws of the farm and are seldom 

 within bounds. They make many lively expeditions 

 for the farm-boy driving them out of mischief, 

 hunting them up in the mountains, or salting them on 

 the breezy hills. Then there is the annual sheep- 

 washing, when on a warm day in May or early June 

 the whole herd is driven a mile or more to a suit- 

 able pool in the creek and one by one doused and 

 washed and rinsed in the water. We used to wash 

 below an old " grist mill," and it was a pleasing 

 spectacle the mill, the dam, the overhanging rocks 

 and trees, the round, deep pool, and the huddled and 

 frightened sheep. 



One of the features of farm-life peculiar to this 

 country, and one of the most picturesque of them all, 

 is sugar-making in the maple woods in spring. This 

 is the first work of the season, and to the boys is more 

 play than work. In the Old World, and in more 

 simple and imaginative times, how such an occupation 

 as this would have got into literature, and how many 

 legends and associations would have clustered around 

 it. It is woodsy, and savors of the trees ; it is an en- 

 campment among the maples. Before the bud swells, 

 before the grass springs, before the plough is started, 

 comes the sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bit- 

 ter frost ; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. 

 It denotes a certain equipoise of the season ; the heat 



