294 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



My brother was later on his return than he anti- 

 cipated, and my new helper had no team. 



" But, of course, with your experience, you can 

 fence," I suggested. "Please get the four corner- 

 posts in for the garden, and then go to the bluff, 

 cut and point the necessary pickets, and begin to 

 fence the house between the posts." 



When I returned from the Fort I saw at once that 

 fencing was distinctly outside his experience. " I 

 know it requires practice," I said, " but you see it is 

 impossible for me to pay two men, and also a half- 

 breed, to do this kind of work." 



As a matter of fact fencing is very simple ; it is, 

 like most work in Canada, monotonous, and requires 

 patience and perseverance, but the reason of the 

 failure of the average white man to fence is that he 

 is too lazy to prepare with the crow-bar sufficiently 

 deep holes for his pickets. Every picket should be 

 at least eighteen inches in the ground — twenty- 

 four is better. If one examines the fence, and even 

 the fence repair of the average hired man, it will be 

 found that the pickets are put in anyhow, with a 

 blunt end, and from six to ten inches in the ground ; 

 yet it is not only easy work for a man, but quite 

 possible work for a woman. It is straining taut 

 the barbed wire that is the real diiBculty, although 

 the sound picketing is the test of the fence. But 

 it is far cheaper to employ expert labour, and pay 

 from sixteen to twenty dollars a mile to get it 

 thoroughly done by half-breeds, than feed white 

 men and pay them by day or week for the same job. 

 The best fence I have seen in Canada was in 

 the Sedgwick Colony of the Shaughnessy Ready- 

 Made Farms prepared for the settlers of 1912, 



