PHASES OF FARM LIFE 235 



famous butter- maker, and Delaware County butter 

 rivals Orange in market. It is a high, cool graz- 

 ing country. The farms lie tilted up against the 

 sides of the mountain or lapping over the hills, 

 striped or checked with stone wall, and presenting 

 to the eye long stretches of pasture and meadow 

 land, alternating with plowed fields and patches of 

 waving grain. Few of their features are pictur- 

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

 farmhouse 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 trim- 

 mings, 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 prin- 

 cipal 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 through 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 con- 

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

 matter. All the energies and resources of the farm 



