Mexico weekly ledger., 1885-05-07
Spring ON the Farm.

Spring on the Farm.
The season has again arrived when
the cheerful granger hies him aield
to commune with Nature in her more
genial moods, and to consign to the
loamy embraces of the soil the pro-
life potato and the long-eared maize.
As he looks abroad upon the smiling
expanse of woodland and meadow,
and suffers his eye to follow the
feecy clouds sailing in the ocean Of
sunlight above, his spirit swells with
JOY, and he enters upon a mental
calculation as to the comparative
producing powers of the Early Rose
and the Burbank's Seeding.
The latter, he concludes, is of too
retiring a disposition, and produces
too few to the hill, to compare with
it's exuberant and watery rival. He
smiles as he calculates the profits
which will accrue from every bushel
of the neatly sliced tubus, which he
has SO carefully prepared for the
ministry of Nature. The voice of
the turtles next-door neighbor, the
bull-frog, wakes 10 poetical response
within his soul, Us he whacks the
off-horse with the hoe, and goes
bouncing cross the field with the
potato-baskets dancing about his
feet.
All the morning long the glad
some granger labors with planter
and hoe. The smell of the soil is in
his nostrils and upon his garments,
and his feet grow heavy with the
voluntary contributions of mother
earth. At noon he starts like the
war-horse at the bray of the trum-
pet, as the hoarse toot of the dinner
horn is waited across the fields, and,
dropping the instruments of agricul-
ture as Cincinnatus dropped the
|plowhandles when summoned by the
couriers from Rome, he claps his
steeds to chariot and shifts the bat
tie from afar. Nature in vain ap-
peals to him with her myriad voices
he fingers not. Arrived at the back
porch with his '.hired help" the tin
wash-dish is dug out from behind
the wood-pile, where it has lain all
winter, a tub of soft-soap is preached,
and in turn the stalwart ons of the
soil divest themselves of the evil
dences of their family relationship.
Meanwhile the fragrant pork has
been acquiring that rich brown tinge
which marks the consummation of
its palatableness, and the milk gravy,
mottled with streaks of grease, swims
in the earthenware bowl. Now to
the feast. Fill high the foaming
tankard with the acidulated cider,
and let Joy and the potato-dish go
round. The good housewife, with
checks flushed red as the Goals over
which she has been bending, slices
the huge loaf of bread in sections
that would crush an ordinary stomach,
and deals them right and left with
unstinted hand. The balmy air of
spring steals in at the open window,
and gently dallying with the farmers
huttering shirt sleeves, sows the
seeds of rheumatism broadcast
through his stalwart frame.
There is a wealth of poetry in
country life, in the spring-time OF
the year. Besides the allurements
of the field, there are a thousand and
one inferior charms which cluster
about the granger's home-life. There
is the setting hen to be branded will
the traditional red rag; and five o.
six Filters of kittens to be drowned
There are the young pigs to be ten
5 derby watched and rescued from thu
3 rolling proclivities of the sow-mother
There are the calves to be fed, ant
5 the lambs to be nursed, and tn
hens eggs to be hunted up in al
sorts of inaccessible places; and an,
quantity Of poetical tasks of a kin
bred nature, which sound a grea
deal better in rhyme than they do i
r prose.
And yet, after all, the farmers lit
is not one unending hey-day-a
:. least, not until July comes. He ha
:. his cares and troubles, like all othe
mortals; and one OF the chief OF thes
is that he did not leave the farm
while too young to know any bette
g and apprentice himself to a grocer {
y 4 GIL 1000 q urnuH