Farmer's wife

“ 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 farmer who would not do this would be considered extremely short-sighted. Their cattle are not allowed to be overworked, or underfed, or abused in any way. Now, pray, is not a farmer's wife as valuable an animal as a cow, or a horse, even looking at the practical side of it? Is it not as important to have a sound, healthy mother of children, as to have a healthy mare or cow? You may say that no woman should marry a farmer, who does not expect to work. ”

“ The farmer's daughter will marry the clerk or the mechanic rather than a farmer, because she knows the life of a farmer's wife to be a life of dulness and dearth, while she believes that the wife of the clerk or mechanic will be condemned to less arduous labor, and will have much more agreeable surroundings. ”

“ She has plenty of good looks—too many, I sometimes think, for a farmer's wife—and she is a real New England Yankee woman, who doesn't know how to milk cows."
"How could any one be too good-looking to be a farmer's wife, grandma?" laughed Bob. "Why should good looks keep her from being successful?" ”

“ There is hardly any one thing on a well-regulated farm so much needed as a cistern near the kitchen door, so the farmer's wife will have to go but a little distance for water, and no man knows how much is used in a farmer's kitchen, unless he carries it for his wife for six months or a year, and if he has to carry it a hundred yards or so from the spring, he will wonder what in the world his wife does with so much water. ”

“ The Government Department of the Home should take all these things into consideration. It should bring to the overworked farmer’s wife better household facilities and more help. The greatest drawback to country life today is the overworked wife, who can not get needed help and who goes beyond her strength in cooking and doing housework for farm help as well as her own family. ”

“ They shirk the work of a farmhouse, especially if it is a dairy, and so it has come to be quite a complaint among farmers' wives, in many places, that servants are not to be obtained. Those that are available are mere children, whose mothers like them to go out anywhere at first, just to obtain an insight into the duties of a servant. The farmer's wife has the trouble and annoyance of teaching these girls the rudiments of household work, and then, the moment they are beginning to be useful, they leave, and almost invariably go to the towns. ”

“ I will have more pleasure, and not, maybe, much less hope, in hearing you detail all the grounds of your suspicion against your wife, than in listening to your nasaling and canting about her innocence. All this is for your good, my dear sir, take it as you will."
"I believe it," said the farmer, "and will try to act up to what you say; but I cannot, of my own knowledge, say much, as yet. These things are done privately, within the house, and a farmer is mostly out of doors."
"Well, away, get access to your wife, ferret everything out of her, as well for her as against her. ”

“ It is true that mistress and maid worked side by side, but the tasks performed now by any farmer's wife are as hard and more continuous than any labor of the early days, where many hands made light work. ”

“ Next to being a minister's wife, I think I should dread being the wife of a farmer. Sometimes, indeed, the terms are synonymous. Raising children and chickens, ad infinitum; making butter, cheese, bread, and the national and omnipresent pie; cutting, making and mending the clothes for a whole household, not to speak of doing their washing and ironing; taking care of the pigs and the vegetable garden; making winter-apple sauce by the barrel, and pickling myriads of cucumbers; drying fruits and herbs; putting all the twins through the measles, whooping-cough, mumps, scarlet-fever and chicken-pox ”

“ Does her husband appreciate what a wonderful woman fate has assigned to him? If not, if he never acknowledges the economic value of this woman's courage and gay spirit, as well as of her mere hand-work and its efficient system, then there may be a sore spot underneath that will never be cured in all her life. Many a farmer husband has said affectionately to his wife that he could never have made a financial success of his farm without her help. But it will take more than assurances like that to satisfy the mind and the heart of the Country Girl in the new era. ”

“ If this may be so, there will be some comfort for the housekeeper in the farmstead on a rainy day when the wood from the pile outdoors is so wet that it will not burn, and the water is cold, and everybody in the house is cross!
It is not a matter to be treated lightly. Whatever burden there is to be borne falls more heavily upon the wife than upon the husband in the farmstead. If the farm is isolated, she is the loneliest person there. If there is poverty, she has the least to use or to spend. If there is lack of labor-saving devices, she has far fewer than the farmer has. ”

“ But does she not help to acquire the money? Speaking, for instance, of the farmer or the merchant, the wife does not, indeed, go to plough, or to look after the ploughing and sowing; she does not purchase or sell the stock; she does not go to the fair or the market; but she enables him to do all these without injury to his affairs at home; she is the guardian of his property; she preserves what would otherwise be lost to him. The barn and the granary, though they create nothing, have, in the bringing of food to our mouths, as much merit as the fields themselves. ”

“ The Fair Sex in the Alps.—The farmers In the Upper Alps, though by no means wealthy, live like lords in their houses, while the heaviest portion of agricultural labors devolves on the wife. It is no uncommon thing to see a woman yoked to the plough with an ass, while her husband guides it. An Alpine farmer accounts it an act of politeness to lend his wife to a neighbor who has too much work, and the neighbor in return lends his wife for a few days' labor whenever requested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wife of the farmer in England is generally a stout, rosy-cheeked, handsome woman, very neatly dressed; she oversees the dairy, and the various operations of the household. She is generally very systematic in her affairs; each person has her particular course of duty, and is expected to do it thoroughly. ”

“ Behind the worthy small farmer, and coming from the door of his residence, most cleverly introduced, is his wife (we know it to represent the wife, from the clear fact of the lady’s appearance being typical of the gentleman’s) , who is in the act of observing that the children are waiting his presence at table, and adding, no doubt, that he had better come in and assist her in the cabbage-and-bacon duties of the repast, than lose his time and annoy the family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the farmer could find no fault with this proposal, he called it a bargain, and the next day went to the mill for the grinding. The miller received him gladly and hastened to carry out his grist to the wagon. As he drove homeward the farmer said to himself:
“How strange that wife should speak so about the flour! But women do sometimes take up such queer notions. ”

“ In the meanwhile, the poor orphan babe had been adopted by a kind neighbour, the wife of a small farmer in the vicinity.
In return for coarse food and scanty clothing, the little Jenny became a servant-of-all-work. She fed the pigs, herded the cattle, assisted in planting potatoes and digging peat from the bog, and was undisputed mistress of the poultry-yard. As she grew up to womanhood, the importance of her labours increased. ”

“ Then the farmer explained how he had met the tiger, and how to save the bullocks he had promised the milch cow in exchange. At this the wife began to cry, saying, 'A likely story, indeed!—saving your stupid old bullocks at the expense of my beautiful cow! Where will the children get milk? and how can I cook my pottage and collops without butter?'
'All very fine, wife,' retorted the farmer, 'but how can we make bread without corn? and how can you have corn without bullocks to plough the fields? ”

“ The man builds and repairs the houses and boats, fells all the heavy timber at the farm, brings home the firewood, and very often nurses the baby. The wives are very domestic, and in their way carefully attend to household duties; they cook, clean the rice, feed the pigs and poultry, spin the yarn, weave the cloth, and make the clothes. A wife is also expected to be polite to visitors, to bring out her finest mats, and offer the interminable areca nut to her guests. ”

“ When hope scarcely spoke, and in tones of the coldest,
And each one on board was the vassal of fear.
I had, in that hour of dark peril, a feeling,
Which never forsakes me, where'er I may be,
The glow of affection around my heart stealing,
Which told, my dear Mary, of Home and of Thee! ”

“ During the time the man is collecting the marriage money he will build a house, if he does not already possess one, and the girl, under the supervision of her mother, will prepare a farm. After the ceremony described above is over, the girl borrows all the finery she can of her female friends, decorates herself with palm-oil and camwood powder, and for two or three weeks walks about the town with her husband—a sign to all that she is now his wife. ”

“ But the elegancies and refinements of English rich life in a prairie farm--impossible! A woman who marries a Canadian farmer, large or small, must put her own hands to the drudgery of life, to the cooking, sewing, baking, that keep man--animal man--alive. A certain amount of rude service money can command in the Northwest; but it is a service which only the housewife's personal coöperation can make tolerable. Life returns, in fact, to the old primitive pattern; and a woman counts on the prairie according as "she looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness." ”

“ The man that does find it, his bride I shall be.
The farmer was pleased when he heard the news———
With a heart full of joy to his lady he goes;
Dear honoured lady, I’ve pick’d up your glove,
If you will be pleased to grant me your love.
It is already granted, I will be your bride,
I love the sweet breath of a farmer, she cry’d;
I’ll be mistress of the dairy and milking the cows,
While my jolly brisk farmer is whistling at plows. ”

“ Tenant-farmers' wives are often asked to act as notaries in such cases by cottage women on the receipt of letters from their children.
When such a girl marries in the village she usually finds the work of the cottage harder than that of the farmhouse. It is more continuous, and when children arrive the trouble of nursing has to be added to the other duties, and to occasional work in the fields. The agricultural labourer's wife, indeed, has a harder lot than her husband. His toil is for the most part over when he leaves the field, but the woman's is never finished. ”

“ An Irish tailor who has had a slight dispute with his wife the night before, and has corporeally chastised her with a hot goose—a tailor’s goose, be it understood—to the extent of all but fracturing her skull. ”

“ Sometimes she becomes angry, and tells him to take all, for they are not hers, but his. If she comply with her husband’s polygamous desires, and furnish cattle to purchase and indue a new wife, she will be entitled to her services, and will call her my wife. She will also be entitled to the cattle received for a new wife’s eldest daughter. ”

“ She, with a milk-pail on her arm, Turns aside with her young cheeks glowing, And sees down the lane, the slow, dull tread Of the drove of cows that are homeward going. “Bessie,” he said: at the sound she turned, Her blue eyes full of childish wonder: “My mother is feeble and lame and old— I need a wife at my farmhouse yonder. ”

“ Although she has been bought and paid for by her husband, she is not looked upon as so utter an article of merchandise as her successors. “When a man takes his first wife,” says Mr. Shooter, “all the cows he possesses are regarded as her property. She uses the milk for the support of her family, and, after the birth of her first son, they are called his cattle. Theoretically, the husband can neither sell nor dispose of them without his wife’s consent. If he wish to take a second wife, and require any of these cattle for the purpose, he must obtain her concurrence.” ”