“well, boys, i’m going to quit and call it a day!” as the hope farm man spoke he got up from his knees in the strawberry patch and proceeded to straighten out his back. it was half past four on saturday, september 4. our week’s work was done—all but the chores. our folks had picked and packed and shipped four big truckloads of produce, with a surplus of nearly 100 bushels of apples and 60 baskets of tomatoes ahead for next week. this in addition to regular farm work—and one day off fishing for the boys. it does not seem possible that september has come upon us! i do not know how she even got here—yet the big hand on the clock’s calendar points to that date. when the foolish finger of “daylight saving” appears on the clock we can discount it, but there is no discounting the mark on the calendar. that is like the finger of fate. yet it seems out of date. we have not finished picking gravenstein apples. in former years labor day found us clearing up the mcintosh. this year we have not even touched them! last year the mammoth sweet corn was about cleaned out in august. now we are beginning to pick. the season and the calendar are fighting this year. now if they will both turn in and hold jack frost up for a couple of weeks later than usual we will forgive the season.
this morning i took this strawberry job from choice—surely no one else wanted it. thomas had not come back from his night on the market. philip cleaned up the chores, while the rest went to picking apples and tomatoes. my daughter goes across the lawn with 100 or more chickens at her heels. they are black jersey giants and r. i. reds going to breakfast. out on the cool back porch mother is playing the part of family “red.” that is, she is canning tomatoes. this porch is screened in, and there is an oil stove to put heat into the canning outfit. the lady is peeling a basket of big red fruit; her hands and arms are well smeared with the blood—not of martyrs, but of tomatoes! this job of mine would make one of those model gardeners too disgusted for comment. we set out the strawberry plants in april, in rows three feet apart, the plants two feet in the row. the soil is strong, and we wanted to push it hard. so in part of the patch we planted early peas between the rows, and in the rest early potatoes. the theory of this plan is sound enough. you get a big crop of peas and potatoes, and take them out in time for the berry plants to run out and cover the patch. in practice this does not always work. while the pea and potato vines stood up straight we kept the patch clean. then came a time when these vines fell down and refused to get up. then came the constant rains and the crab grass, and weeds came from all over to seek shelter under these vines. before we could interfere the patch was a mass of this foul stuff, and the long rains kept it growing. the richness of the soil delayed ripening of the potatoes, and by the time we got them out the strawberry plants seemed lost in the tangle. here i am cleaning up this mess. most of the work must be done with the fingers—a hoe would tear up too many runners. you have to get down on your knees and pull. as i crawl across the patch i leave a pile of weeds behind me like a windrow. i hold up my fingers and it seems surprising that they are not worn down at least half an inch. if i had kept those peas and potatoes out of here the berries would be far better, and i would not have this crawling job. i am not to be alone here after all. that big black chicken leaves his crowd on the lawn and comes over here to scratch beside me. the jersey giants are very tame and enterprising. this one stays right at my elbow for hours—the only member of my family to take this job from choice. he will have all the worms i can dig out!
there is a rattle and a sputter on the driveway and the truck comes snorting into the barnyard. at the same time tom and broker, the big grays, come down the hill with a load of apples. tom scents the gasoline and pricks back his ears with a snort. you can see him turn his head as if talking to sober old broker:
“that fellow thinks he’s smart, but what fearful breath he has! for years we went on the road like honest horses and did all the marketing on the farm. why does this man keep such a great awkward thing around? it may have speed, but i’ll bet it eats him out of house and home!”
“well, now,” said old broker, “every horse to his job. working right on this farm is good enough for me. let that truck do the road work, says i. no place like home for an honest horse like me.”
“not much. i like a little life now and then. i want to get out on the road among horses and see what is going on. that great, lazy, smelling thing has got us farm-bound where nobody sees us or knows what we are doing. and look at the gasoline that thing eats up, and its keep—my stars!”
“well, you have something of an appetite yourself. a gallon of oats costs something, too. i’ll bet this man can’t feed and shoe and harness you for less than $200 a year! let’s be glad this thing takes some of the work off our shoulders!”
“but i saw this man’s bill for repairs”—but there came a jerk on the lines and “get up!” and tom put his mighty shoulders into the collar and pulled the load up to the shed, while the truck with a snort that sounded like a sneer moved on into the barn—just as if a repair bill for $273 was a very small matter.
thomas was tired—as you might expect after a night on the market. the load sold for $106.95. it was a mixture of corn, apples and tomatoes. that looks right at first thought, but one year ago the corresponding load of about the same class of goods brought $143. that is about the way they have gone this season. our prices are certainly lower, and every item of cost is higher. there can be no question about that, yet our friends who buy food are paying as much as they ever did. but for the truck we would be worse off than we are now. we never could handle our crop with the horses. it is more and more necessary to get the goods right into market promptly and with no stop. while the truck has become a necessity, let no man think that it works for nothing. old tom is right in saying that i have a bill for $273 for refitting the truck this year and putting it in shape for the season. that item alone will add quite a few cents to the cost of carrying each package. some of the smaller farmers on well-traveled roads are selling at roadside markets. this is a hard life, and includes sunday work, and i understand that for some reason people are not buying such goods as they did. the retail trade is rarely satisfactory when one produces a fairly large crop. i think the plan for the future will mean a combination of farmers to open a store in the market town and retail and deliver their own goods co-operatively.
my back feels as if there were three hard knots in it. i must straighten them out by a change of occupation. i am going up on the hill to look at the apple picking for a time. little rose, barefooted and bareheaded, dressed in a pair of overalls, trots along with me. she eats two tomatoes on the way up, and then i find her a couple of mellow mcintosh. the dirt on the tomatoes has been transferred to her little face, and i think some of it follows the apple into her mouth. oh, well, these scientists will probably find vitamines in dirt before they are done. we are picking gravensteins today—big rosy fellows—some of the trees running 15 bushels or more. i planted a block of these trees as an experiment. now i wish i had more of them. the last lot brought $5.25 per barrel. i do not care much for them for eating, but as baking apples they sell well. this year any big apple brings a fair price. for instance, that despised wolf river has been our best seller. the boys own several trees of twenty ounce, which are bringing about $20 per tree this year. cherry-top is going to paterson this afternoon to put some of his apple money into a bicycle. i have told in past years how i gave my boys a few bearing apple trees and how they have bought others. these trees have given surprising returns. the larger boy is just starting for college, and his trees will go a long way toward paying expenses. the objection to giving such trees or selling at a low price is that the boy finds the income very “easy money.” it would be better for him to plant the young tree and stay by it till it comes in bearing. the only chemical i know of for extracting character out of money is warm sweat. i’d like to spend the day on the hills—here in the sunshine with the apples blushing on the trees and the grapes purpling on the walls and the clouds drifting over us. but that would never clean up those strawberries, and so little rose and i go down on a load of apples—big tom and broker creeping down the steep hillside as if they realized that here was a job which the truck could not copy.
i got at those weeds once more. philip had carried several bushels to the geese, and these wise birds make much of them. the big sow, too, stands chewing a big red root as a boy would chew candy. nearby on a grassy corner little missy has been tied out. she is a very proud little cow, for just inside the barn her yellow daughter lies in the straw—pretending to chew her small cud. we shall have to call this young lady sippi to complete her mother’s name. missy has given us a taste of real cream already. but here is a pull at my shoulder, and little rose, her face washed and hair brushed, comes to lead me in to dinner. there will be 14 of us today. i wish you could make it 15. the food is all on the table, so we can see what there is to start with. have some of this soft hash. that means a hash baked in a deep dish, with considerable liquid in it. you may think we live on hash, but a busy saturday is a good time for working up the odds and ends. then you can have boiled potatoes, boiled beets, sweet corn, tomatoes, bread and butter, baked apples and all the milk you want. we are all hearty eaters, and i figure that if i took my family to the restaurant in the city where i sometimes have my dinner, the bill would be about as follows:
hash $4.20
potatoes 1.40
beets 1.40
sweet corn 3.60
tomatoes 1.40
milk .90
bread and butter 1.40
baked apples 2.30
$16.60
that is a very low estimate of what this dinner would cost us. now what would a farmer get at wholesale for what we have eaten? not quite $1.30 at the full limit. last week i ordered a baked apple and was charged 30 cents for it! but no matter what this dinner would cost elsewhere, it is free here, and i hope you will have another baked apple. try another glass of milk. our folks have a way of pouring some of that thick cream in when they drink it.
that dinner provided heart and substance to all of us. i am back at those berries, and philip has come to help me. our folks have stopped picking apples for the day and will cut sweet corn fodder—where the ears have been picked off. that will have to be our “hay” this winter. the women folks and a couple of the boys have started for town to do a little shopping. philip and i have a pile of weeds here as large as a henhouse, and the strawberry plants as they come out of the tangle look better than i expected. a car has just rolled in with a family after apples. one well-groomed young man is viewing me appraisingly over his glasses. he is talking to the soft, fluffy young woman at his side. “is that the hope farm man? a rather tough-looking citizen! why does he do that very common work? he ought to hire that job done and get up out of that dirt!”
this young man will never know what it will mean next spring when the vines are full of big red berries to know that he saved them and with his own labor turned them from failure to success. he probably never will know any such feeling—and that is his misfortune. this weed-pulling gets to be mechanical. it doesn’t require much thought and i have a chance to consider many things as we work. a short distance away is that patch of annual sweet clover. the plant we have been measuring is now 60 inches tall and still growing. the plants are seeding at different dates—some of them earlier than others. what a wonder this clover will be for those of us who have the vision to make use of it.
but my day’s work is over—i’m going to adjourn. i am quite sure that i could have picked 50 bushels of gravenstein apples from those low trees instead of working here, but this seemed to be my job for the day. what now? i’m going to make an application of hot water and get this soil off my hands and arms, shave, put on some clean clothes and take my book out on the front porch until the girls come home. what book? well, i found in an old bookstore a copy of james g. blaine’s “twenty years of congress.” as i had just read champ clark’s book i wanted to read blaine’s. i can well remember when about 40 per cent of the people of this country considered james g. blaine a hero. the trouble was that about 60 per cent thought otherwise. his book is a sound and serious discussion of the legislation which covered the civil war and 20 years after. as i worked here today i have been thinking of what blaine says of senator matt carpenter. this man was a brilliant student, but suddenly went blind. for three years he sat in darkness. yet this affliction proved a great blessing, for he forced himself to review and analyze and prove what he had read, so that when sight came back to him his reasoning powers were remarkable. this book contains the best statement i have ever read of the reasons for trying to impeach president andrew johnson, and how and why the effort failed. what’s that got to do with farming? well, i think the political events which clustered around that incident came about as near to smashing the constitution and wrecking the government as anything that has yet happened. but here comes cherry-top on his new wheel. he actually got home ahead of the car. i must hurry, or our folks will not find that literary reception committee waiting for them. better come along with me. i have some other books that will make you think, and i’ll guarantee that thinking will do you more good right now than a day’s work.
