JANET TRIES CARPENTRY
There was so much to do, once Janet started in trying to keep fowl and
other barn yard stock, that the poor diary was seldom remembered. Now
and then, at long intervals, she jotted down items, merely as a salve
to her conscience and to placate Helene, when the home-coming should
reveal the truth that the diary had been sadly neglected.
Early Tuesday morning, having thrown the diary into the bottom bureau
drawer, Janet ran downstairs to ask Rachel for a hammer, saw and
nails.
“What foh, Honey?” demanded the suspicious cook.
“I’ve got to build a good pig pen, Rach, and fix over that chicken
coop before Ames brings over the hens and rooster.”
“Does yoh know how to drive a nail?” asked Rachel.
“That’s nothing to learn. You just hold the nail where it is to go and
then bang! bring down the hammer,” explained Janet.
“Ump!” chuckled the mammy. “Da’s all! Jus’ fotch down the hammer. But
moh times as not, dat same weapon hits yoh fingah nail and den yoh
does a jazz dance, all right!”
“Oh, pooh! If one uses judgment and looks where the hammer is to go,
there is no excuse for accidents,” Janet bragged.
“All right! Hab it yoh way. I’m sure I ain’t one to wish no mashed
nails fer yoh. But be keerful—da’s all I says!” And with this last
admonition, Rachel got the tools for Janet.
Natalie assisted Janet in moving the crate containing the three pigs,
to the barn yard where they were left until such a time as their
future residence should be completed. Meantime they certainly made the
welkin ring with their deafening squeals.
“My goodness, Jan, how can such nerve-racking sounds come from such
tiny creatures?” wondered Natalie aloud, as she stood gazing down at
the squirming porkers.
“They can silence any steam siren from the factories in New York, or
across the River,” laughed Janet.
“Well, I’m off for my garden. I don’t envy you working to such an
accompaniment of harmony,” giggled Natalie, skipping away.
Janet now went to the loft of the barn to seek such lumber as would
answer for the building of the pen. But she found that most of it was
too heavy and cumbersome, or very frail and light. The pig pen and
chicken coops had to be ready, however, so she took as many old lath
and discarded shingles as she could carry, and heaped them beside the
broken down pen that had given years of service to the last tenant of
the farm.
Janet stood planning what was the first step to take in building a pig
pen. As she was a bright girl, she decided to examine the methods used
in building the nearby cow shed. So she went over and found it was
necessary to use posts to form solid supports to which the crossboards
could be nailed.
“That means I’ll have to hunt up some sort of stuff to do for posts,”
murmured Janet, as she returned to the barn for the quest.
But she saw nothing that would answer her need, so she left the barn
and sought anxiously back of the sheds in the piled up discard of old
posts, boards and broken sash frames and trim. Finally she selected
seven badly decayed posts which had been removed from the road line
years before when the former tenant of the farm had nailed the wire
fencing to the cherry trees, as Farmer Ames explained in Natalie’s
Garden Book.
“Well, they’re posts, anyway!” declared Janet to herself, dragging as
many as she could move over to the new location for the pig pen.
The best post was used first. Janet held it up on the line she
proposed to build upon, but she discovered that the timber would not
stand without a support.
“What now?” thought she, glancing around for an inspiration.
Then she comprehended what was lacking. “Oh, I see! One has to dig
holes and plant the posts, first!”
Again she stood bewildered. “What do they dig with? I think I’ll ask
Jimmy.” She ran to the house to secure the valuable information that
would enable her to continue her work.
Mrs. James was assisting Rachel with the dinner and both women paused
long enough to explain that most post-holes were made with a boring
machine that came for that very purpose. But, as there was no
post-hole digger at Green Hill Farm, the next best plan was to use
muscles to bore the holes. A pick and spade were the necessary tools
to handle.
Janet frowned but she was determined to succeed or die. So she took
the pick and spade from the cellar and carried them to the barn yard.
She dug and shoveled steadily for an hour, and then sat up on the
crate and moaned with the ache in her back and arms.
“I wish to goodness I hadn’t listened to Nat’s sorcery! If she only
had hinted at one iota of the labor necessary to start a stock farm,
this scout would never have been the one to break a back working at
it!” complained Janet, very carefully wiggling her spine to dispossess
a few of the cramps.
While she tried to straighten out her muscles Farmer Ames drove in at
the side gate and shouted to Rachel. “I got the fowl for them gals.
Where shall I leave ’em?”
Janet was eager to run to the house to greet her new stock members but
she could barely move. So she contented herself with watching Rachel
wave her arms to direct the farmer toward the barn yard.
When the team stopped near the chicken yard, Farmer Ames pulled the
feed bags from the wagon and carried them to the “run.” Janet had
managed to exercise her muscles sufficiently, by this time, to be able
to get over and welcome the farmer. He looked at her and then at the
poor enclosure for the chickens.
“You don’t mean to keep chickens in that broken-down yard, do you?”
asked he.
“Oh, no! I’m going to build a fine fence and new coops immediately.
But I have to look after the pigs first, you know. I have been working
like mad all morning to finish their new sty.”
“You don’t say you ain’t got them pigs outen that crate yet? By the
great horned spoon, gal, do you want to kill ’em?” gasped Farmer Ames.
“Of course not!” retorted Janet, highly indignant at such a needless
query. “Did I not spend my own money to buy them?”
Then Farmer Ames went over to look at the posts Janet had erected. She
followed in silence, hoping for yet fearing his verdict. He grasped
one with an iron hand and shook it vigorously. The timber was rotted,
and the post was only standing in a hole of about three inches depth;
but Janet had piled dirt up about it to the height of about ten inches
and had packed it solidly about the sides to make it seem to be firmly
standing. But one result could occur at the shaking—the post fell.
“Oh, dear me! Just see what you’ve done by handling it as if it were a
steel girder on a skyscraper!” exclaimed Janet, her voice expressing
her annoyance.
“If the rotten post wouldn’t stand a gentle tap like I gave it, how do
you s’pose them pigs would keep penned in when they grows a bit. I
wants to tell you, gal, that them pigs ain’t no sickly brand. Once you
treats them fair they’ll make your eyes pop with the way they grow. My
brother gets all the prizes for his hogs at the County Fairs
hereabouts. And your pigs are of that same kind,” was Farmer Ames’s
practical reply.
“What else could I do when posts are not to be found?” complained
Janet.
“Buy some and use a post-hole digger!”
“Where do you buy such things? And a post-hole digger will take a week
before it gets here from the city.”
“Can’t you cut down some young trees in the woods down by the crick?
Them will make good posts. And you could have hired me to dig the
holes with my machine. I was comin’ here, anyway.”
Janet pondered this solution, but waited before engaging the man to
dig the holes. “I’ll think it over and let you know. I must not go
into debt for this business, and I spent all my money for the fowl and
pigs, yesterday.”
“Well, I’ll leave them bags with the chickens in ’em, until you fixes
a coop for ’em. I kin take home the bags any time,” returned the
farmer, then he went back to the wagon and climbed in.
Janet watched him go as if the last friend on earth was about to
vanish, but she would not ask him to help her dig holes for the young
trees which she now planned to chop down in the woods. So Ames drove
away and Janet sat down on the crate to revise her old building plan
for the pen.
“Pshaw! The darlings have to be taken out of this box without delay.
And chopping trees and digging holes means delay. I’ll just go on and
finish this fence as I started it, and build a stronger and better pen
afterward.”
So she jumped up and stuck the fallen post back in the shallow pit and
tamped down more earth about it. The other posts were planted in the
same manner, and then Janet began to arrange the lath and boards upon
these shaky posts.
There was little difficulty in nailing the light boards to the sides
of the old sty, but when she began to hammer the nails to the post,
she found matters to be very different. With the first hard blow from
the hammer, the post leaned. With the second blow, it wobbled
suspiciously. Janet frowned and straightened it from inside the pen.
Then she braced a board against its side to force it out the other
way. By holding it carefully on one side while she tried to hammer the
nails in on the other side, the post stood the test—but Janet did not.
She paid more attention to the hand that held the post than she did to
the direction the hammer took. Her thumb was quite close to the nail
she planned to drive into the wood, while her four fingers circled the
post and were on the opposite side to the thumb. When the hammer came
down with great force, it glanced from the wire nail and landed on her
thumb nail instead.
“Ou-ouch! Whe-ooo-ah! Ooh-ooo!” howled Janet, dancing wildly and
holding her thumb while she tried to ascertain how badly it was
crushed. To her further annoyance she found there was not a bit of
blood or other sign to have caused such severe pain. So she began
sucking her thumb loudly in order to ease its jumping pain. Then she
examined it again; still no visible testimony of injury.
“Wouldn’t Rachel haw-haw if she knew this! She said a hammer made lots
of trouble for one. But I won’t tell a soul of the old thing!” So
deciding, Janet got up and renewed her efforts at building.
The call for dinner interrupted her carpentry, hence she dropped the
hammer and nails with a sigh of relief and ran for the house. As she
ran, she heard the pigs squealing in the crate, but she held both
hands over her ears until she was in the house where their sounds
could not be heard.
“Well, Janet, how goes the barn yard work?” asked Natalie.
“Splendidly, Nat! I’ve almost got the pig pen done. And Ames brought
the fowl this noon. I’ll have to finish that chicken run so I can let
them out of the feed bags.”
Rachel was bringing in the soup at this moment and overheard the
reply. “Does yoh mean to say dem hens ain’t out of dose bags, yit?”
“No; Ames said it wouldn’t hurt them to wait while I build the coops.
But he did say that the pigs must be removed from the crate or they
will die. So I have to finish their pen first,” explained Janet.
“Den it will do dem hens good to run about and scratch a bit, Janet.
All my fowl down Souf’ used to wander about. Dey lays better fer such
exercises. Ef we opens dose bags inside the old henhouse and gets ’em
acquainted wid surroundin’s, dey will come back to roost at night. Let
’em go about the place, says I, ’stead of baggin’ ’em up in Ames’s
potato sacks,” advised Rachel.
As this was acceptable advice to Janet, and Mrs. James and Natalie
seconded it, no time was lost after dinner in freeing the chickens
from the feed bags. They were taken to the old chicken house and there
released. Not only were the six Plymouth Rock hens and the highly
colored cock glad to be free, but the eighteen little chicks showed
their pleasure, too, by fluttering noisily about and scratching
without further delay.
“Aren’t they wonderful birds!” sighed Janet, as she saw them all
follow the rooster out of the run into the open barn yard back of the
hen house.
“Yes,” added Natalie. “Now the place begins to really look like a
farm, don’t you think so, Jimmy?”
“When we have that cow, and a calf that Janet wants, and other stock,
we will realize it is a farm, not alone look like one,” laughed Mrs.
James.
“Humph! I says dat when sech a time ’rives, it’ll be mos’ time fer my
nephew, Sam, to jine us. Den it’ll need a man to help,” added Rachel,
whose one great ambition was to find some need at Green Hill Farm
whereby her orphaned Sambo would be called upon to hasten from the
wicked city and devote his energies to farming.
Mrs. James inspected the fence Janet had worked so arduously upon that
morning, but she had to hide a smile when she took hold of a post.
“Will this pen soon be ready for the pigs, Janet?” she asked.
“I hope so, Jimmy,” sighed the carpenter.
“Natalie, what do you say if we remain to help Janet finish the fence
so we can free the poor little pigs?” suggested Mrs. James.
“Oh, I think it will be fun, Jimmy. I’ll run back with Rachel and hunt
up a hammer and some more nails.”
As there was but one hammer in the establishment, Rachel gave Natalie
a hatchet to use. It had a flat head that could be used as a hammer if
one were careful in wielding it properly. When Natalie returned to her
friends, she found Mrs. James hard at work sawing some narrow boards
in pieces of similar lengths and Janet was busy bracing the posts with
short wooden stakes.
“I’d love to saw wood, Jimmy, while you help Jan nail the fences,”
hinted Natalie, eagerly.
“Do you think you can handle a saw?” asked Mrs. James.
“Certainly! It is easier than making the fence.”
“You keep a knee on this end of the wood, you know, and hold the
saw——” began Mrs. James, when Natalie interrupted.
“I know just how to do it, Jimmy, so don’t lose time!”
At this assurance from Natalie, Mrs. James handed her the saw and took
the hatchet. She went over to help Janet brace the posts firmly, and
left Natalie to her sawing.
Thus left alone, Natalie began to saw as she thought Mrs. James had
done. She knelt upon one end of a board and began to work the saw up
and down. But she used both hands to hold the handle of the saw and
failed to steady the board with the left hand. She had not seen Mrs.
James use one hand to keep the board from sliding about.
Once, twice, three—not all of three times did the saw gr-r-rate up and
down through the wood, then all of a sudden the narrow board slid
diagonally across the box and Natalie’s knee slid from under her. Down
she came upon the box, skinning her arm from elbow to wrist upon the
rough edges of the board.
Both Janet and Mrs. James came running at the cry of indignant
surprise and pain from Natalie. She was twisting her neck in the
attempt to ascertain how badly her forearm was disabled; but Janet
reassured her thus: “Oh, it’s a mere scratch, Nat. You’d have
something to wail about if you mashed your hand as I did this noon,
when the hammer slipped and hit the wrong nail!”
Then Mrs. James patiently explained why the board slid. And Natalie
began again while her two companions went back to erect the fence. All
went well for a time, for Natalie was circumspect over the sawing. But
even the greatest watchfulness will not always prevent mistakes, and
so when Natalie sawed and sawed, and sawed without making any apparent
progress through the narrow board, she called again for Mrs. James.
Janet followed, too, because she would not be left out of any
interesting events in this carpentry work; besides, Natalie’s tone
suggested that another thrilling experience was taking place.
“Why, my dear child!” laughed Mrs. James, when she saw what Natalie
had been trying to saw through. “Didn’t you notice that the board was
moved so close to the edge of the box that you were actually sawing
through the three sides of this box as well as trying to go through
the board?”
When the herculean task she had been striving to accomplish was
revealed and demonstrated to Natalie, she dropped the saw and cried:
“You saw wood, Jimmy! I’m going to hammer nails.”
Mrs. James laughed merrily and called after her: “But don’t hammer the
wrong nail, Natalie!”
The hens had wandered away from the barn yard and were temporarily
forgotten by the stock-farmer, but the pigs gave their owner no peace
until the pen was thrown together in a sort of a way, and the crate
carried to the enclosure. Mrs. James and Natalie helped release the
cramped little creatures, and Janet stood inside the fence to take
each one as it was removed from the crate.
It was a fortunate thing that they were too stiff from their close
quarters in the box to be able to squirm and get away as they were
lifted up out of the crate. But once they were at large in the pen
they soon recovered their activities and raced about in excitement.
Mrs. James and Natalie stood watching them run and double back in
their tracks and often strike against Janet’s shins with such force
that she staggered in the pen; then Mrs. James said: “Better come out,
Jan, and go for some mush to feed them.”
Unthinkingly, Janet climbed up by one of the corner posts and before
she could reach the top slat in the fence, the whole structure fell
over throwing her full length in the pen. The pigs were so frightened
that they sought the shelter of the little shed and there huddled
silently.
“Quick! Quick, Natalie!” called Mrs. James, seeing that the inevitable
would happen if once the little pigs escaped from the pen. “Get me the
box we used for a sawbuck—I’ll shut the pigs in the shed by standing
the box against the door.”
Natalie ran for the box while Janet managed to get upon her feet again
and try from within the pen to bolster up the fence. She managed to
prop up the post but the weight of the boards made it sag hopelessly.
Meantime, the box was used to close up the entrance of the shed and
kept the pigs inside.
“It’s too late to work longer on this fence,” said Mrs. James. “The
pigs are all right for the night, and we’ll repair the fence in the
morning. But you must go to the house and prepare the corn meal and
milk for them or they’ll squeal all through the night.”
Natalie and Janet eagerly cooked the mush and carried it back to the
pigs, then gave them a fresh drink of water and left them. Janet
suddenly stopped and gasped.
“Now what’s wrong?” cried Natalie, also stopping to gaze questioningly
at her friend.
“The chickens, Nat!” was the hardly audible reply.
“Oh, the chickens!” added Natalie. “Where can they be?”
“I hope they have not lost themselves. I’ll never be able to collect
them all again, if one went here and another there,” wailed Janet,
then added as an afterthought: “And all my monthly allowance will be
lost with them!”
But an encouraging cluck, sounding from the grass plot near the house,
now cheered the two girls and they hurried there to find the
chickens—big and little—eagerly picking up the scraps of food from the
grass where Rachel had tossed them for the wild birds.
By dint of warily dropping corn in a trail that led to the barn yard,
Janet succeeded in housing all the chickens that night. Then she gave
them a generous supper of corn and locked them in the coop.
After Janet had housed the fowl Natalie smilingly glanced over at her
gardens. “I guess I’ll run over and see how the greens are coming on,”
murmured she, and started off.
Before she had gone very far along the pathway, Janet joined her and
described how easy it was to catch chickens! Arm in arm they reached
the first garden bed. But the awful cries and subsequent actions from
Natalie caused both Rachel and Mrs. James to hasten from the house and
fly across the lawn in order to learn the cause of the fearful
commotion.
“See! Just look at my beautiful vegetables!” cried Natalie, pointing
at the stumps of lettuce plants minus their blades of green, and those
tender shoots dug out and wilted, beside the piled up heaps of soil.
Mrs. James and Rachel exchanged looks and frowned at Janet who had a
suspicion of the truth. But Natalie never dreamed it might have been
the chickens. She fumed and shook a fist at the woodland where a flock
of crows could be heard cawing—cawing!
“I’ll rig up the most frightful scarecrow tonight and place it out in
this lovely garden of mine; then let one of those black thieves dare
to come again! They’ll see!” was the garden scout’s threat as she sent
another malignant look over her shoulder at the tall tree where the
crows laughed at her.