Farmer's daughter

“ They could hardly wait for their mother to get home.
"Oh, mother!" they called out as soon as they saw her; "do take us away from this field. The farmer has sent for Mr. White to cut this wheat to-morrow."
"If that is so," said the mother, "you need have no fear. If he waits for his neighbor to do his work, his wheat will not be cut." ”

“ Before the frightened woman could say a word, the fairies had all set to work with a will, and the corn and yams lay useless on the ground. Being all green and unripe, the harvest was now utterly spoiled. The farmer’s wife wept bitterly, but to no purpose. She returned slowly home, not knowing what to say to her husband about such a terrible catastrophe. She decided to keep silence about the matter.
Accordingly, next day the poor man set off gleefully to his field to see how his fine crops were going on. His anger and dismay may be imagined when he saw his field a complete ruin. ”

“ Girls are crouched between the knees of fathers or brothers or friends, while boys are perched wherever—boy-like—they can climb. The houseman is twisting twigs of heather into ropes to hold down thatch, a neighbour crofter is twining quicken root into cords to tie cows, while another is plaiting bent grass into baskets to hold meal. The housewife is spinning, a daughter is carding, another daughter is teazing, while a third daughter, supposed to be working, is away in the background conversing in low whispers with the son of a neighbouring crofter. ”

“ It was long, hard work starting a farm in a place where there was nothing but woods; but after a year or so had passed by, and enough trees had been cleared away to make room for a corn field and a potato patch, and a little chicken-house and cow-shed had been added to their log-cabin, the young farmer used to sit down before their rough stone fire-place, with its bright crackling fire, and trot his boy to sleep upon his knee, while he watched the pretty young mamma putting away the supper things, thinking all the time what a rich and happy man he was. ”

“ Frequently passing to and fro, busily engaged in arranging an ample breakfast in the barn, appeared his daughter, a pretty round-faced girl, with black hair and the long and silky-lashed dark grey eyes of her country, where merriment loves to dwell, and a rosy mouth whose smiles served at once to display her good temper and her fine teeth; her colour gets fresher for a moment, and a look of affectionate recognition brightens her eye, as a lithe young fellow springs briskly over the stepping stones that lead across the stream, and trips lightly up to the girl, who offers her hand in welcome. ”

“ The head of many a family is overcast with gloom as he ascertains the true state of his affairs, and perceives how little he has to show from the past year of toil. His family may have been industrious in a general way, and yet been consumers only, and not producers. We knew a farmer's family where there were three daughters just budding into womanhood. On inquiring of the mother what she had to sell to clothe her daughters with, she answered, Not a thing. Have you no butter, eggs, fowls, honey, or bees-wax to sell from this good farm? ”

“ Aunt May continued, “but they have to forage for themselves, except for the few bits of vegetable and such things we can spare them. We’ve no corn or flour or meal of any kind for ourselves yet. But a farmer’s wife [187] about a mile from here has got a few acres of wheat and barley coming on, and we shall help her to harvest and take our share later. We shall be rich then,” she added, with a smile.
“I’m town-bred, you know,” said Blanche. “We’ve got an awful lot to learn, Millie and me.” ”

“ Of course no one would wish to claim that the young woman in the farmstead is of more importance than other members of the home; but as a chain will break if one link fails, so the farmstead will be ruined if it lacks the cooperation of the daughter. She has, at least, a function all her own; and the happiness that comes through normal growth must be hers in order that she may fulfil her mission. ”

“ Although the burden of the farm business on the home is often decried and there is obvious need of lightening the mother's work for the farm as much as possible, yet under the best of conditions there is on the farm a constant and intimate contact between the father and mother and children which is rarely found under other conditions.
Primitive woman discovered the art of agriculture. ”

“ Thus while each farmer keeps his own Maiden, as the embodiment of the young and fruitful spirit of the corn, he passes on the Old Wife as soon as he can to a neighbour, and so the old lady may make the round of all the farms in the district before she finds a place in which to lay her venerable head. The farmer with whom she finally takes up her abode is of course the one who has been the last of all the countryside to finish reaping his crops, and thus the distinction of entertaining her is rather an invidious one. ”

“ The wife of the farmer of moderate means who does her own cooking, washing, ironing and sewing, brings up a family of boys and girls to be useful members of society and finds time for intellectual improvement. ”

“ In harvest the women get up at four or earlier, and do their household work before starting for the fields. But, perhaps, by this time another girl has grown up sufficiently to nurse baby, mind the young ones, and do slave's work generally. Then the elder daughter goes to the fields daily when there is work to be had. In arable districts the women do much work, picking couch grass—a tedious operation—and hoeing. They never or rarely milk now. In the dead of winter there is nothing for women to do. At this age—fifteen or sixteen—the girl perhaps goes out to service at some farmhouse. ”

“ Their shout brought their mother hurrying into the yard.
"They're not ours, are they?" she asked. But the big brothers were bringing the wagon team and a cultivator horse out of the barn, unsaddled and unbridled, and did not hear. Before she could reach them, they had dashed off.
She stood looking after them, her apron over her head. She knew that if the cattle in the field belonged to the farm, something had gone wrong with the little girl; and she strained her eyes anxiously to where loud bellows, shouts, and the cracking of cattle-gads told that the herd was being routed. ”

“ The accounts of this custom are not quite clear and consistent, but the general rule seems to be that, where both a Maiden and an Old Wife (Cailleach) are fashioned out of the reaped corn at harvest, the Maiden is made out of the last stalks left standing, and is kept by the farmer on whose land it was cut; while the Old Wife is made out of other stalks, sometimes out of the first stalks cut, and is regularly passed on to a laggard farmer who happens to be still reaping after his brisker neighbour has cut all his corn. ”

“ When the mother makes pottery her small daughter makes crude, miniature pieces: when the mother bakes corn cakes her little shadow bakes tiny cakes of mud and, after a time, is allowed to use the precious corn meal itself. When the mother goes to the spring the little girl trots at her heels and soon she is carrying small jars of water on her head. She spends long hours at the grinding bin and equally long hours caring for younger brothers and sisters. As she grows older, she accepts more and more responsibility and finally, when marriage comes, she is an accomplished housewife. ”

“ This new agent came now and he came to every farmer in that hamlet, and the mother waited at her own door, the grain heaped on the threshing-floor and waiting, and the agent came.
He was a townsman, head to foot, a tall, smooth man, his gown gray silk and leathern shoes on his feet, and he had a large smooth hand he put often to his shaven lip, and when he moved a scent of some sort came from him. The mother hung back when he came and when he called, “Where is the farmer?” the woman waited and let the old mother pipe forth, “My son he works in the city now, and there be only we upon the land.” ”

“ The close swaddling and padding of baby is found, the more we consider it, to be the fashion among both civilised and barbarous kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, where women are very hard-worked. It is easy to understand how that must be. When the mother digs and plants the soil, and grinds the corn, draws the water and cooks the food for her husband and children—as does the savage woman of every clime—when she spins and brews, and makes and mends, and cooks and cleans, as does the house-wife of almost every degree in almost every country of Europe ”

“ By night, however, all strangers approach at their peril. The farmer's sister lives on the adjoining farm, communication between the two farms being obtained by means of a single plank across the deep ditch that separates them. Sometimes the farmer's children want to visit their aunt, and they are always entrusted to the care of the dog. ”

“ He inflamed her heart; "O, my heart!" she
did cry.
She turned from the squire, but nothing she said,
Instead of being married she took to her bed;
The thought of the farmer soon run in her mind,
A way for to have him she quickly did find.
Coat, waistcoat, and breeches she then did put on,
And a hunting she went with her dog and her
gun;
She hunted all round where the farmer did dwell,
Because in her heart she did love him full well:
She oftentimes fired, but nothing she killed,
At length the young farmer came into the field ”

“ it seemed to me pretty plain, that they had more of love than matrimony in them: yet, whatever they might portend, it was resolved to prosecute the scheme of farmer Williams, who, from my daughter’s first appearance in the country, had paid her his addresses. ”

“ The mountain farmer’s wife is not only a household drudge, but a field-hand as well. She helps to plant, hoes corn, gathers fodder, sometimes even plows or splits rails. It is the commonest of sights for a woman to be awkwardly hacking up firewood with a dull axe. When her man leaves home on a journey he is not likely to have laid in wood for the stove or hearth: so she and the children must drag from the hillsides whatever dead timber they can find. ”

“ In peasant homes they still have the right instinct: the mothers preserve their daughters, the fathers their sons, from the rough, unpleasant labors. A proper mother lets her daughter sew while she herself works among the cattle. ”

“ Under modern conditions, as a result of her education and broader knowledge of life, through her more frequent contacts with town and city and through her wider reading, many a farm mother is coming to feel that her position is an anomalous one. In some cases she may be able to solve her own problems, but only a general change in public opinion concerning their position will bring a more acceptable status to farm women as a class.
Some of the farm woman's problems arise from the increasing division of labor between her husband and herself and from the marketing of the farm products ”

“ It is indeed an almost immeasurable distance from the primitive mother scratching the soil with her sharpened stick, her baby bound to her bended back, in order to plant a few seeds for a tiny harvest to save the life of her child when the hunt should be poor, to the modern mother whose food supply for her family comes to the table from all parts of the earth at the call of her telephone. ”

“ She isn’t afraid to go on a farm because she doesn’t know anything about it. She’d always lived in town before she came here, but she’s crazy about the country, and no gush about it either. She takes the kids to the woods and has them making gardens at the school, and all that. When I bought the farm every old wiseacre in the settlement came and said: ‘You’re making a mistake. That girl’s never done farm work and wouldn’t stand it for a year.’ I could have wrung their necks. I didn’t want to marry any girl to have her help to support the place. ”

“ The fourth child is a 10-year-old girl, whose time is consumed in the care of the children of her blind sister, bringing the water for family use, and grinding the corn (the mother and sister occasionally assisting in the grinding) and preparing the meals, which consist, with rare exceptions, of a bowl of mush. During the planting and harvest times the father alone attends to the fields, which are their main dependence; and he seeks such employment as can be procured from his people, and in this way exchanges labor for food. ”

“ Besides the riding, there were many other delightful pastimes which were a part of life on the farm, and on rainy days, when the children could not play out of doors, they would flock to the big barn, and listen eagerly to stories told by the city girl, who had read them in books. Two precious years passed all too swiftly on the farm, and the young person was fast shooting up into a tall, slender girl, who had learned a love of nature in all its forms, which never left her. ”

“ The husked corn filled the cribs to bursting, the wheat lay in yellow heaps on the granary floor, and the hay, stacked high, stood along the north side of the low, sod barn in a sheltering crescent. There was little left to do on the farm before the winter set in, and the cold mornings found the family astir very late. So one raw day, when the fields and prairie without lay white in a covering of thick frost, it was after sun-up before the little girl's mother entered the kitchen. ”

“ Some day, he believed, every farm in the district would have mechanical power doing the heartbreaking drudgery which was making boys shiver at the thought of farming all their lives. Occasionally a woman coming from the barn with her milk-pails and a fretful little toddler or two tagging along after her would startle him with a crowd of memories which he had been trying hard to forget. ”