1909 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
075 
Hope Farm Notes 
A DRY DAY. 
It was dry. The Government reports had 
heeu “indicating” showers. We should 
have known better when my neighbor, the 
old sea captain, shook his bead, but I held 
up the mower on Friday rather than have 
our hay soaked. We had 18 loads in the 
barn in perfect condition, but I went by 
those “indications" and hit it wrong. 
There was a dark cloud in the west when 
I came out of the house, and a stiff wind 
blowing. We had hired two Italians to 
help with the hoeing, and they are about 
as independent as their Homan ancestors 
who conquered the world—we had to carry 
them to work. .So one of the boys drove 
over to the station to get them. Haying 
and picking and spraying all coming to¬ 
gether, had given the weeds a great chance, 
apd they had improved their opportunity 
as I wish many of my human reserves 
would. In spite of that cloud in the west 
I planned a weed-killing day. With the 
aid of the Italians we had cleaned out the 
Spring-set strawberries, but a patch of 
yearlings, transplanted last August, was 
still we'edy. I got Nellie on a cultivator 
and began to work those plants. In cul¬ 
tivating berries my plan is to narrow the 
cultivator and work back and forth three 
or even four times in a row, tearing the 
ground thoroughly and working close to 
the plants. Then .Tack and Henry followed 
with hoes and cleaned out the weeds, throw¬ 
ing then' around the little peach trees 
which have been planted among the berries. 
In a season like this a live weed is a 
sucker, while the same weed pulled out 
and thrown beside a tree is a suckerer. 
It was feed grinding day. so as soon as 
he could get breakfast Philip hitched Rob 
and Jerry to the sweep grinder. The hop¬ 
per was tilled with whole corn and oats 
and the horses began their monotonous 
round. The ground feed came pouring out 
at the bottom. We crush the corn and oats 
and then mix this feed with wheat bran. 
By doing this we save nearly 15 per cent 
over buying ground feed, and know just 
what we are feeding. I wanted those 
horses for cultivating, so Philip kept them 
at a sharp walk until the feed was ground. 
Meanwhile the boy came back with the 
Italians. I called them Romeo and An¬ 
tonio. “What’s in a name?" They made 
no objection, though “Roneo" was a griz¬ 
zled old fellow of my age or more—cer¬ 
tainly past the age when one would be 
expected to become deeply interested in 
"Romeo and Juliet." Antonio was a young 
fellow who smiled at everything you said 
to him until you intimated that his hours 
were short and his price long. 
The older Romans made many a pleasant 
country into a desert. It seemed very ap¬ 
propriate that their descendants should 
help save a wilderness. In truth, I saw 
no evidence of fire and sword about these 
Romans except a row of matches which 
Romeo carried tucked under the rim of his 
hat! It is not impossible that the metal in 
the old swords is now in our hoes. So Rob¬ 
ert hitched Bob and Jerry to the wagon, put 
aboard two cultivators, two hoes and a 
scythe, and with our Italian reserve we 
started for the back field. I have been tell¬ 
ing how we started to show what can he 
done with a “loafer field.” There was an old 
field at the back of the farm, well covered 
with birch and briers. After much trouble 
we got it plowed and harrowed with a 
spring-tooth. Then we planted corn as 
lyost we could, and put on fertilizer. Thus 
far there .was a fair amount of hope in 
the enterprise, but we did not realize how 
much energy there •may be in a Jersey 
loafer field when it can get lively weeds 
to do its hustling. This field is off by 
itself out of sight, and hard to reach, and 
while we were picking berries and haying 
the weeds rushed in as I bad no idea they 
could. Ten thousand roots that I thought 
were dead came to life, until the field 
seemed alive with sprouts, while weeds 
matted close around every hill of corn. It 
was about the clearest evidence of poor 
farming I ever saw, and I knew it was 
now or never—clean it up or stand dis¬ 
graced all Summer. That cloud in the 
west began to lift, and the sun came out 
hot and strong. Robert took Bob with 
one cultivator and worked north and south, 
while I worked Jerry east and west. There 
was little progress to be made unless we 
went twice in a row, and that meant four 
times working of the field. As soon as we 
got started Romeo and Antonio came in 
with hoes to clean the weeds around the 
hills and chop off the smaller sprouts. 
Whenever I want to think out some hard 
problem and get it reasonably straight I 
take old Jerry on a cultivator. His so¬ 
ciety is as helpful as a lawyer, a scientist 
and a statesman all in one. The old horse 
knows his business and goes at it patiently 
and with courage. He needed full supplies 
of both in this “loafer field.” There were 
stumps above ground to be dodged and 
roots underground that would not dodge, 
rocks to strike the cultivator teeth and 
briers to tear at you as you went down 
the row. Then the rows could not be called 
straight by any truthful stretch of the im¬ 
agination. Old Jerry soon became wise to 
the situation. lie didn't intend to ruin 
his shoulders, and when the cultivator 
stuck at a root back came the old horse 
while the cultivator kicked back like a 
steer's hind foot. It's a wonder I didn’t 
have a rib broken, but I soon learned to 
dodge. The sun climbed higher and hot¬ 
ter, and the wind began to blow the heat 
in. There could not have been a better 
weed-killing day. As we worked on into 
the field I could see how brown and rich 
the new soil worked up. By the time the 
Italians had cleaned up a few rows I was 
surprised to see that the corn was the best 
on the farm. It stood up green and tall, 
only needing a fair chance with the weeds 
to make good. This is likely to be one 
of the best fields on the farrr when we con¬ 
quer it. I do not know of any place better 
for Alfalfa. Robert and I met in the mid¬ 
dle of the field, and I found we had both 
been studying the future of that soil. His 
advice was to cut the corn and plow the 
field, leaving it open through the Winter. 
My plan is to sow Crimson clover and 
turnips and pull the stumps in the Fall. 
I had stopped to rest Jerry under a 
tree when a man came walking through the 
woods. He wanfed a job. and I told him 
to get at the cultivator and try it. One 
trip up and down convinced me that he 
and .Terry would not work together, so I 
put him at mowing in the peach orchard. 
We had cut the grass with the mower, leav¬ 
ing strips of grass along the rows of trees. 
These are cut with a scythe and the grass 
raked around the trees and left there. 
I have said that I stopped Jerry by the 
woods to rest. The old fellow soon taught 
me better than that, for a swarir of flies 
and mosquitoes came upon us. Out of the 
(!0 odd varieties of mosquitoes in New 
Jersey the woods inhabitant is one of the 
worst. As for horse flies, they made for 
.Terry’s head and ears. I cut a bunch of 
green boughs and fastened them over the 
old fellow’s head—he doing his best to eat 
up his protectors! He went back and forth 
with a head dress like an Indian’s. We 
did our resting out in the middle of the 
field, T leaning on the cultivator handles 
and Jerry nibbling at the corn. I was 
thinking that, after all. there never was 
quite such a blue sky as fTersey can show 
—at her best—and that it was a great 
tiling to be conquering a strong field which 
for years had been a mere breeder of 
weed seed, and and worse than useless. 
Jerry has the discontent which sometimes 
goes with old ago, and I have no doubt if 
his thoughts could hi* put in words they 
would run about this way: 
“The world does not treat me right. 
When they want a tough hard job done 
it's ‘Get up. Jerry,’ though my legs are 
stiff, and I ought to be out at pasture with¬ 
out a thing to do. They put the hard work 
on me, while that impudent little brown 
filly is petted and praised because she can 
arch her neck ’and trot off on a hard 
road. Do they put her in a cultivator and 
say, ‘Go on. Brownie—pay for your feed 
now?’ No, once in a while she is hitched 
to a light wagon and the mistress says, 
‘Come, Brownie!'—just as if it. was a 
great accommodation for that impudent lit¬ 
tle tiling to move her feet. It's rope har¬ 
ness and ‘get up’ for old Jerry, but ‘dear 
litfle tbing’ for that lazy minx. I do the 
work and she gets the sugar plums. If 
this man had real life about him he would 
stop this injustice! ‘Cone, now, and fin¬ 
ish this field. How long would it take 
you if you had that upstart Brownie in 
my place?" 
My old friend Jerry has not read his¬ 
tory, or he would know that since the 
world became civilized woman has ruled it. 
It may be injustice or out of reason, but 
for ages the Jerrys have toiled and the 
Brownies have been petted. I presume it 
will be ever so except in time of war or 
famine, or in some crisis when society must 
wipe off all the veneer and get down to 
the rough foundation. 
The wind blew on and the sun grew 
hotter, but the army kept moving. 
“lie maka me sick a!” 
It was Romeo who gave out this infor¬ 
mation. Partly by words and more by 
signs I found that he needed water. So 
he learned the way to the spring. At noon 
Robert and I brought the horses down for 
dinner. Romeo and Antonio had brought 
their lunch—bread and cheese and an 
onion. I found the weeds dying by the 
thousand by the house. .Tack and Henry 
had finished the strawberries, while Philip 
with his Dutch hoe was cleaning out the 
garden. The children had picked half a 
barrel of peas for the rresh air youngsters 
and half a crate of currants. The girls 
had made this into currant jelly. We had 
a sample of it for dinner along with hash, 
spinach and potatoes. An hour on our 
cool porch with a book after dinner would 
have suited me very well, but uo one can 
afford to loaf when a loafer field is hiring 
weeds to work, so it was “back to the 
woods,” and I took Jack and Henry along 
to reinforce the Italians. By a little after 
three the cavalry work was done, for Bob 
and Jerry, not to mention their drivers, 
had toiled over the field. We left the four 
hoe men and carte down where Robert 
cultivated potatoes and sunflowers, while 
I went at a weedy potato patch near the 
house. The boy was spraying his potatoes. 
He had an auto sprayer and a half bar¬ 
rel of dissolved Pyrox as ammunition. I 
was pulling out great handfuls of weeds 
when word came that “them fellers” 
wanted to see me. In the barnyard I 
found Romeo and Antonio all smiles, and 
holding out a hand for money ! These gen" 
tlemen figure a nine-hour day. They claim 
that they got to the station a little before 
seven o’clock and that the pleasant ride over 
to the farm is at tty expense. They take 
about 10 minutes for eating and at four 
o’clock politely announce that their day’s 
work is over. 
“We wanta da mun.” 
Wo all want “da mun,” or at least our 
share of it, but not every laborer is able 
to master the situation as Romeo and An¬ 
tonio do. There was no way of arguing 
with them, so I paid them off and the 
boy drove them away. They went off with 
many low bows, the most profound of all 
directed at Mother, who sat sewing on the 
porch, and who, unknown to them, had 
chided me for hiring them. As I may 
want them again, I asked “Romeo” for his 
address. It took away a little of the pleas¬ 
ant flavor of Roman tradition to have him 
tell us that his name is Dominick Spanio. 
At any rate, he can kill weeds! 
Our folks wanted strawberries for supper 
and nominated me a cornu ittee of one to 
pick them. We have picked berries from 
that Kevitt patch about 27 days In suc¬ 
cession. They are not as good as they 
were, yet they answered the purpose. We 
stopped selling four days before, yet there 
was a small order to be filled to-day. Jack 
and Henry came down from the loafer field 
to report it clean of weeds at last. I was 
still working in the potatoes when the 
little girl came out to toll me supper was 
nearly ready and that we were going to 
have •“company.” I had been so busy that 
I had not noticed Mother holding forth on 
the porch to the fresh air women. Back 
on the hills a mile or so west of us a 
farmhouse has been fitted up as a place 
where little city children may spend a 
few weeks in .Summer. These good women 
have charge of it, and Mother has been 
shaking the farm for vegetables and fruit. 
Of course, our little girls felt that I must 
put on a necktie and “look nice” on such 
an occasion. I .have been asked to do 
what seems like the impossible before, so 
I left n y potatoes and went in to try to 
add a little dignity to my position as head 
of the family. Happily they were all so 
interested in the baked beans and berries 
that even my mild sample of dignity an¬ 
swered the purpose. When supper was 
over Mother drove the fresh air women 
hotte. A dozen boxes of currants were 
tucked under the seat and the peas tied 
behind and Brownie trotted briskly off on 
her errand. The boy had come back from 
delivering the Italians, and had found a 
baseball on the road. Of course, this had 
to be sampled, so the younger Hope Far¬ 
mers took to the lawn for practice. As 
for me, I confess that I was tired with a 
little rust at the joint of my knee. I 
was well content to sit in a rocking chair 
on the porch with my book after the chores 
were done, though the boys challenged me 
to come and strike them out with my old- 
fashioned curves. There was a whiff and 
a cough and a big notor car came rolling 
into the yard. It was a belated customer 
after strawberries. The sun went sliding 
behind the hill to the west and the air 
grew so chilly that I brought out my coat. 
It was pleasant to sit at the close of the 
day and review the season. Certainly the 
farm never looked better. We shall have 
nearly twice as much corn as last year, 
twice as many potatoes, a good apple crop 
and tile peach trees were never more prom¬ 
ising. The Soy beans are coming on, the 
hay is nearly all in the barn, and there 
is hardy a weed in the 10,000 strawberry 
plants. Surely Hope Farm has more than 
its share of material blessings—the land 
is producing bountifully and we are all 
well and happy. It grew too dark to read, 
and I sat thinking how but a few weeks 
ago we eatte near growling because there 
was too much rain, and here we are get¬ 
ting ready to complain because it is too 
dry. The day and the week have ended. 
Through the gathering dusk Brownie 
comes trotting up the road. The girls went 
to meet Mother, and they are all safely 
back home, so we all pass inside to the 
light. The dry day is over—evening finds 
us moist with hope and faith and the 
moon looks down with solemn face upon a 
scene of contentment. I wish the day 
could end for all our folks as happily as 
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