The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1906-07-13
With the Long Bo,D
Sy --nEye natures walks. shoot folly IA 1t HIes."
Weather and Country that Makes Us All Long to Got
Out and Cultivate the Fields and Shake Nature for
the Crops Strong Argument Put Up for that Rural

rs safe to say that half Of all the people who
work in a city cherish the ideal of sometime
somehow, getting money enough together to be able
to live farm and have real cream on their berries
and make cheese that not full of lard and other COM
merciasms. have talked with men located in dusty
offices tucked away under the steel Orders on the
eighth to twelfth stories of skyscraper with nothing
in sight but the office files and discouraged stem
ographer whose mouths have watered at the thought
Of eedn the pigs again and of milking Eng eighteen
with great joy at the memory of weaving the calf
and who have onged with mighty longing for
week of haying with one rainy day in the middle OF
1t for fishing. o.
Yet they knew in their hearts that It be.
They have their hands on levers of big enterprises,
while others might make it go, it would grind and
squeak little for time at least, and that would
do.
wears at the desk, would put them in the hospital
A real fishing expedition to which they did not 60 in
automobile or parlor car would mean rneumatsm
and general breakdown.
Besides all that, there things fighting the
farmer than there in the prepotato bug days.
Farmer Ben in his Austin Transcript this week,
enters volube complaint of the things that get after
the horny-handed. He says:
'sI tell you us farmers hav to fte for everything
we raise. Just before the Fourth my potato patch
looked like regular garden and I was tellin' wife
how good it seemed to have em so thrifty and iii be
Covered with bugs to beat the band It looked like all
the old he in six counties had congregated and
taken the job Of downin' my patch at sttin It's
50 with everythn' we get IT. bugs for the cucum-
bers and squashes and potatoes, and worms for the
currants and gooseberres and apple trees and now
root worm is maxim my cabbage fall down. It's rust
for the oats and blight for the fax and grub
for the timothy and flies for the~cows and tick for
the sheep and somethin all around. You CAM sit
down in the shade hour but the weeds will get to
work in onion patch and try to monopolize the
ground. It beats all how we hav to watch and fight
all the time to get enuf for ourselves. But after all
we manage to get plenty to liv on just the same.
how of had To foht wha we
got and I'm still learnin' it. It's part OF Natur's
learned when a boy that had to fight for what we
appreciate what hav when we sweat for 1t and get
intimately associated with it,
AS
friend who tried to little garden at Lake
Minnetonka has been foiled in his efforts by the alb
tail rabbit The rabbit absorbed about
everything that appeared above ground. In this he
was ably assisted by a set of the cunningest
squirrels you set eyes on. few groundhogs ar
gophers assisted in the game by bulrowng under the
wire fences and stepping anything that was left
If the gardener attempted to go near his green goods
department the squirrels all sat up in tree becam
very indignant and threatened to strike if he didn
keep away
This gardener now understands what the farmer i
against who tries to garner a small crop withou
bloodshed.
Yet only last week I met who had real
broken away from the city and deliberately farm
ing tract Of 200 not twenty miles from tn
city haul His wife not only backed him up in it, bu
is accustomed to sing while churning. She declared
me that the butter ''came' in exactly four minute
after she performed the 'Overture to the Churn.
Butter often in surprising haste when you sin
the song of the churn, but if you grunt and long
somewhere else it takes fifteen minutes of unmitigate
churning to get a color This rising young farme
had put in twenty-five of the noblest potatoe
the ever shone on. His wheat looked like a ban
boo jungle in Japan, and his haying going o
with the enthusiasm and verve of comic opera. T
could sit his front veranda at eventide and tt
air full of the crunching, grinding sound made
herd Of chewing the rag and intent the OF
object in life of giving vast oceans of milk that
half This didn't say so, but you cou
see by the light that radiated from his entire fami
that he had Che game of beating the stock market
dusty granitoid city skinned to agricultural fms
M4
But you will notice, if you take the trouble
notice, that, while those who in the city wish