Norwich bulletin., 1910-07-09

T. Just as we began to pick our first | green peas the drouth set dn, and about | half of tha later paintings are now l turning yellow and dying at the roots. Lack of water.
 The next things due are potato l blight, corn smut, and oat-rust. Hap
 at all Anyway. I'm not going to worry about 'em till they do. There's no real need of doing so. There's 1 enough to worry about as it is.
 | Of course Pve saved something out
 of the struggle. Indeed, as I look 1 back I'm quite surprised to see how
 much has been dragged out of the | fight But, if I only had a market
 for the ohickweed and quack- grass | and shepherds purse and pus1ey we've hood and pulled up I think could have got rich. The trouble is there seems to be no demand for that sort of 1910 production. Everybody else has all he needs of such supplies. Now l don't for one minute suppose | that my experience, this year, has been any worse or much different from that of every other chap who is trying to dig a living out of a truck patch. I've perhaps had few troubles he's eScap- ed; he doubtless has had some I've not met We've all of us been having a edly strenuous" time Of 1t. There has been something actively pressing or urgent. going on about eleven days out of every ten. Satan hasn't found many idle hands to set at mischief among the farms and gardens of New England this season. 1, for one, am looking forward with real desire to the coming of a clustering winters day, next December, when birds and bugs can't circulate and blight and bacterla can't destroy and weeds can't grow and it'll be too stormy to work out doors, and I can put my slippered feet on the fender and just loaf.
 
 My hands are caIIcused and roueh- ened, my feet are sore, my back is lame and my old head goes swimming vertiginously sometimes from over this particular moment I really wish things would let up" a, bit, an1 ease off the pressure. I'll bet a stale dough- nut against green apple that there are several hundred thousand other oId hayseeds in these United Sta es wro feel much the same way.
 But would we really be any happier If the bugs should suddenly absorb all the bacteria and the birds eat up all the bugs and then fly away to central Africa doubt it, brethren. The most of us have such a capacity for finding trouble that think, if there were no birds or bugs or bacteria we'd still be in a perennial and perpetual stew about something else. You've heard of the ''worriting Sarah" who, after a long and hard life, went to heaven and stopped the first sympathetic seraph she met with a complaint that her halo didn't fit If is isn't one thing it's another. That has been, is, and apparently always will be the rule.
 don't think, however, that we farmers need to have the "strenuous life'' preached to us this year. There may be those who require to be prod ded somewhat in that direction. But vua dac all he fn1 ant hal way which our cases really call for. The days are fairly long, now, and there is som ething doing from sun-up to moonrise-if not later. It has made me laugh little sometimes when cir cumstances didn't seem provocative of merriment-to think just how some tired city man, hungry for a farm would have felt about It had he follow months. He would have seen new aspect of the country. fancy.
 Nevertheless, life is not all salt and bitter. As I look out at the tasseling rows of corn we've saved and the toss- trim rows of the vegetable gardens, and, nearer the house the rioting col ors of foxglove and larlkspurs and fire- pinks and exuberant roses and opening clematis, I feel that indescribalbls thrill of exultation which comes to a man with the towering of his labors into visible and tangible results of use or beauty. While I cannot make the corn or the caboages or the roses grow, l can furnish the conditions under which they will grow and can help them to combat some of their enemies and aid them to a fitness of develop ment they could not attain without me. In a certain sense, and in a limited de- gree. all these crops are the fruits of my labor-the results of my strenuous toll. Remembering that we never get something for nothing-that all we ob- tain we pay for in some wage of mon- ey or sweat and bIood-we toiIers of the dirt have the right to exult in that which we accomplish; the right and the privilege.
 This is typical, calm, sunny, sweet aired summer day. And five acres of thrifty garden are smiling up into my face as I walk the paths, and saying |
 thank you, boss" as plainly as If | each leaf were a larynx, capable of vocalixing its vegetable gratitude for care and service. Around me the green mountains circle and the lush grass fields sleep: above me the unsnoked | sky vaults into visible infnity; the air | is redolent with flower perfume and | thrilling with bird-calls and songs. Of l course it's been hard to take care of | things. But 1t pays. brethren; pays in 1 coinage purer than that of any l Philadelphia minti
 THE FARMER |