Norwich bulletin., 1919-05-09
The Wet Days On the Farm-What Can Be Done?

farm work is concerned, April and
 May are the meanest and most agra
 vating two months in the whole year.
 Sentimental schoolma ans and Silly
 SallieS of both sexes may chatter and
 twaddle all they choose about "b-e-w-
 tiful Spring." and its "alluring prom ise." Oh, rats! The farmer who wants to raise corn and cabbages and
 cucumbers and radishes is much less interested ln promise, no matter how aIluring, than in performance He begins his year full of ambition and hope, and instinct with stored-up en- ergy. He wants to "do" things. He pulls out his blows and harnesses up his team, and gets about two furrows turned when, swishi out of the east l comes a three days downpour; or swoof! out of the northwest comes a weeks snow. He tips the blow over, unharneSSeS the team and stands in the stable-door. chewing a straw and eating his own heart out in constrain- ed idleness. He hopes it may be only a passing shower or furry, but it keeps on, getting worse and worse, till
 at last he gives up hope and begins to wonder what on earth he can find to do that will be worth while doing. -Oh, yes; the rain is working for 1 that. So does every farmer. That is to say, some of it is working for him. But, looking at it simply from the soil workers point of view, April and May are both much in the habit of over doing a good thing. Some of the rain which has fallen on my fields during the last four weeks has been of in
 calculable value to them. But, rough iy estimating it from the swollen brook which takes my farms drain
 age, I should say that at least ninety eight gallons of every hundred which have fallen thus far have gone down : that brook. or into the sedge e-infested worthless swamps which absorb some of it's overflow. If few million bar rels of it could have been impounded above me and held there till next July July or August, when crops are crying for rain and it won't rain and can't be hired to, why, that would have been all right But. just at present, so far as farm needs are concerned, there's a surplus which is almost as dam aging and even more irritating than a deficiency.
 I also admit that there are some i things which can be done on a rainy day. The tools can be frightened and oiled; the cellar can be cleaned out; the harnesses can be fixed up; minor repairs can be made to some things; plans for the next fair day may be elaborated. Yes. indeed: there are things which can be done on a rainy day. even on the farm. But they get themselves done. after a time And the rain is still coming down. And the
 wind is still in the wrong quarter. soaked thing which squelches under
 foot. You hunt up the butternut bag
 and begin cracking nuts-and your
 fingers-to occupy the time. When that
 palls you sit on box under the shed
 land whittle a pine stick till your knife
 gets so dull that it won't cut any
 more. Which discovery actually brings
 you a certain ioy. for it gives you the
 job Of grinding and whetting it-a job
 which IS a real relief!
 And then, if you're almost seventy. and somewhat rheumatic in the i'ints
 and leetle ,onsartain in the head and
 bit crichy in the back and feel a
 trifle 'shiftless' all over, you crawl LID on the hay in the barn, wrap an old
 blanket around you and try to take 8 nap. while listening to that much be-
 slGhbcred music" of the rain upon the
 roof.
 You get into q sort of doze and be-
 gin to dream that you've undertaken
 q new Noah's ark job and are trying to get twenty-five chickens, three cats. ; dog, two horses: and the heifer on board a scow which looks exactly like a Thames river coal barge when the i gangplank breaks and the whole me- nagerie goes into the drink with a ! splash-and you start up, wide awake i to hear the steady and monotonous i batter of that same old rain on that ] same old rofo.
 ! It's a merry, merry life, that of the horny handed farmer in the bright @ i springtime. When the rain at last stops. he hovers over his potential po- 1 tato field or corn patch, trying the mud to see if it won't "do'' to blow. There comes 8 bright day. The water
 dries or drains out of the top soil. The
 @ln sets red. The sky is a cloudless
 blue. He takes one happy, hopeful
 lock upwards as he locks up for the
 night. and goes to bed early so as to : le OH hand promptly next morning ! to begin that blowing.
 1 Then he wakes up as daylight is 1 just beginning to filter over the east ern hills--to hear the rain once more l dashing against his window panes un- der the drive of another easterly wind ! and to see the visible corner of his to l be- -plowed field already returning to ] 1 You know the old saying that al ] signs fail in a dry time" They do ir ! a wet spring, too.
 1 The moral for us farmers to take tc 1 heart from such weather conditions is just that the weather wasn't made for our special benefit. and that God isn't l working 'steen million Special Provi- dences' over 'steen million separate farms for the individual advantage o1 1 'steen million different farmers i There's a larger purpose involved than we can see with finite eyes. The big machine of nature isn't being run solely to carry our crops to market. Ii . is on a journey from whence we do not know and to a destination we cannot understand along a road never sur veyed by human engineers. If we car hook on to it and make any progress at all towards our own desired ends why, that's our good luck. But it isn't
 our jitney. Not by long shot.
 And the moral for the back to- the flanders" is that they had better try
 out a spring on the farm and see how
 they like it before they put all thei,