The coming of spring--Fishing by torch-light--Sudden beauty of the
springtime--Seeding--Foul weeds--Hospitality of Ontario farmers.
The reign of winter on the lake shore, with its hummocks of broken ice,
seems longer than it really is. Those who observe it day by day are glad
when March comes, with its lengthening days and its presage of spring.
Soon we have a few days’ sunshine, and perhaps a warm pervasive rain.
The change thus made is scarcely credible to those who have not seen it.
In a few hours, with the sea beating upon this ice, before so
unassailable, the banks shrivel the ice away. Here and there along the
shores and among the sands obstinate pieces of ice still linger for a
few days, half covered by the sands, which have thus far protected them.
But spring, joyous spring, is near. The ubiquitous crow’s caw is once
more in the air. Troops of wild ducks convene in the open spaces of our
marshes and ponds. Sportsmen, before the light of day, creep up to the
open water, and the first morning rays are greeted with a steady bang,
bang. The sportsman has his reward. Should the lake surface be rough, so
that the ducks cannot rest there, they are forced to fly back and forth,
and the shooting goes on all through the day.
The fishing time arrives almost before we have expected it. You are made
aware of it, perhaps, by a neighbor coming to borrow a spear. Now,
nightly, pitch-pine torches will flare and blaze, casting a lurid light
along our creeks. Stand at a distance and watch the fishers. See how
their forms are increased in size until they look like veritable giants
in the haze of the blazing light-jack. Hear their shouts as they race up
and down the stream for suckers, pike, mullet and eels. “Here he goes”;
“there’s another”; “plague on your jack--you missed that big fellow”;
“hand me that spear, you are no good as a sportsman.” So the fun and
jollity goes on far into the evening.
In this land, where the four seasons are clearly and distinctly defined,
spring comes to us with a beauty unknown to those who dwell in lands
which do not possess such unmistakable divisions of the year. If the
winter was snowy, frosty and stormy, it had in its place sufficient
enjoyments to make us love it; but now that it has passed, budding
spring, with its ever-present deep green, comes to us with a bound, with
a new pleasure of anticipation, added to its reality after it is once
here.
How quickly our spring comes to us may, perhaps, be best shown by
instancing that the last flurry of snow of one season was on the 7th day
of April, and on the 20th of April the cattle were out feeding on the
grass. A more abrupt change in any given locality is not to be found in
any land, and stock generally is soon feeding upon the fields. Fruit
trees were in blow three weeks before. Some of the most beautiful sights
in nature are now afforded in our land by our fruit trees, laden with
their pink and white blossoms, among which darts the industrious honey
bee, and beside which are the deep green fields of grass or grain. Among
our pastures, at the same time, nature is most prodigal of her beauties.
The dandelions dot our fields with their yellow heads. These are the
dandelions we used in our childhood days to pluck and hold under the
chins of our companions. If the reflected light from the flower on the
chin was yellow, partaking of the flower, our companion “liked butter,”
but if not yellow our companion “did not love butter.”
Tiny blue violets are also among our fields, and many delicate blue
garlands are woven by young hands, hung about our dwellings, and many
times find their way into our schools and upon the teachers’ rostrums.
The famed primrose of old England is no prettier than our wee violets,
and for variety of color and deepness of the same we can safely invite
comparison with any land under the sun.
Our clover meadows already wave with the breezes. Walk among the clover
and see the ground-hog as he sits upon his haunches beside his hole of
retreat, and see how he eyes your every movement. If you do not get too
close, nor come upon him too suddenly, he quietly allows you to enjoy a
good look at him. Make the first demonstrative motion and he disappears
in an instant under the surface. This ground-hog is about the only
universal rodent we have with us, and his ravages are so light that as
a rule we do not seek his extermination. On the typical occasion
referred to, seeding began about the middle of April, and was vigorously
prosecuted, until by the end of May it was almost all accomplished.
Grains first sown at this time almost completely covered the ground.
This was about two weeks earlier than usual. It has generally been a
rule among farmers to have their seeding all done by the 24th May, so as
to have the leisure to celebrate that day at some neighboring town.
The old-fashioned way of seeding by hand, broadcast, is among the things
that were. After that came the broadcast seeding machine. Now seeding
machines are drills that put the seed down into the ground at any
required depth and effectually cover it. Seed drills are also used as
cultivators, and most excellent ones they make, too, so that our lands
are now much better prepared for seed than formerly. The farmer who does
not possess a seed drill is now considered only half equipped and not up
to the mark. This change in the method of farming has given rise to
enormous manufacturing businesses, for to supply three-fourths of the
farmers of Canada alone with seed drills, any one at a moment’s
reflection can see, must make a great business for manufacturers. And
when our grass and grain come to maturity, light mowers will cut the
first, and the ingenious complex binder will cut and bind the grain and
leave it all ready for drawing in. In no country under the sun has
agriculture made as great progress as in Canada during the last two
decades. Labor-saving machines are as near perfection among us and as
plentiful, and far more so than among any people of anything like the
same population. Whenever any of our people get an idea that we are
slow, just let such semi-discontented persons travel about the land of
our forefathers in Britain or on the continent and he will return home
fully convinced that they have not yet fully awakened up.
Foul weeds are annually becoming more prevalent among us. We are, in
fact, annually seeing weeds in our fields which we never saw before, and
whose name even we do not know. So from this fact alone, the old process
of farming would not do now at all, neither would fourteen successive
crops of wheat on one field, as has been done in Canada. The means of
communication are now so quick that somehow these foul weeds of distant
parts get generally disseminated over the land and are no longer locally
confined to certain areas, supposed to be their individual homes, as
they were formerly. Look along our railway tracks and you will
frequently notice at the sides of the line weeds which you never saw
before. It is only, then, a question of a season or two, when they will
get into the neighboring field. There is, however, no need to be
discouraged, for if we only look at the lands of the Old World which
have been cultivated for a thousand years, we find all the foul weeds we
know so far, and many dozens of kinds which we never saw before. Summer
fallow and root crops, of course, is the first remedy. Our people are
yearly putting in a greater area of roots and feeding more cattle. Our
prized privilege of sending our cattle to the British markets alive was
formerly one of our greatest boons, and we must try by all means to keep
all cattle diseases out of our land, so that Britain will regard us as
the favored people. Australia is too far away for live stock shipments.
As for the United States, the climatic conditions are such there that we
can grow healthy cattle when theirs are affected and beat them; that is
to say, we can send live cattle and make a good profit when they cannot,
but must send dead meat.
Seeding down and grass feeding upon our fields is another good method to
rid our lands of these foul weeds. When the foul plants are young, by
eating the fields pretty close our flocks nip off the foul stalks, and
keep them from seeding. But if the plant be an annual, during the latter
part of the season such pastures can with profit be turned into a late
summer fallow, and thus be cleared. Wire root is got rid of by turnips
and thorough cultivation. But perhaps the easiest and laziest way to get
rid of this pest, which gets down so deep in lighter soils, is to sow
buckwheat on such fields thick and heavy. Many farmers assert that a
stout crop of buckwheat will choke the wire root out, and leave not a
root alive. Ordinarily our farmers sow buckwheat only for this purpose,
and to plough down as a green crop for manure. Very few of our farmers,
in fact, will grow buckwheat for a crop, and consider it beneath the
dignity of the quality of their fat lands to raise buckwheat as a crop.
That man partakes of the nature of the soil, is, perhaps, to most
persons at first thought an anomaly, but yet it is so. Where the soil
grudgingly gives to the husbandman a very moderate living, his
hospitality in a certain sense partakes of the nature of his lands.
While he does his best for you as a guest, still the heartiness and
bountifulness of his larder, for man and beast, is in a measure subdued,
as it were, and somehow the guest feels that he ought not to deprive the
careful husbandman of too much of his essentials of living. The
husbandman is necessarily cramped and bound as his farm is. But go among
those whose lands are fat and fill the great barns, and where it’s a
task to take care of his bountiful crops, and we find another kind of a
man entirely. There’s no stint. Your horse may consume bushels of oats
per day if he will, and if ordinarily good milk is not of your liking,
cream is just as free as the milk is. Open-handed, big-hearted; a man
one involuntarily likes, as you grasp his broad, brown hand, and his
fingers give a tight squeeze. And such are the great majority of
Ontario’s husbandmen, a people of whom any nation may justly feel proud.
I am wandering from my springtime, and will get back by saying that bee
culture among us is becoming fairly developed. Food for bees is in such
abundance among our fields and fruits and woods, that in the future this
industry must necessarily be much larger. Fourteen years ago I saw a
field of about eight acres sown with sweet clover, to feed the farmer’s
bees. It was the sweetest smelling field any one
[Illustration: CANADIAN APPLES AT THE GLASGOW EXHIBITION--“THE BEST IN
THE EMPIRE.”]
ever passed by; a grove of orange trees was nothing in comparison to it.
Since it was such a novelty I am mentioning it, for it is the first
instance I ever knew of. The farmer, who had one hundred swarms of bees,
explained that his bees had been feeding upon the basswood trees, but
now that they had got too far developed he wanted this sweet clover for
later feed. And this bee-keeper averred that it fully paid him for
sowing the eight acres of sweet clover.
Fruit prospects were never more promising than they were last spring.
Our trees were one literal mass of blows. If they had all borne fruit
the consequence would have been most disastrous, for all the trees would
have been broken down. Of course, most of them fell off. It is not frost
we so much fear in Ontario for blight of our buds, for we seldom get a
frost severe enough for that after the blows come. Blight usually comes
from a dry east or south-east wind, blowing steadily for a couple of
days. This fact is so well known that on many trees the south-east side
will be perfectly void of fruit, while the north-west side, which was
sheltered by the rest of the tree, will be in bearing. We shall be able
to send to British markets hundreds of thousands of apples this fall,
which over there they so highly prize. But let the fruit-grower ever
remember that he can’t get the prized red cheeks on his fruit unless Old
Sol shines upon it. In order that he may do so the trees must be pruned
quite open to let him peep among the branches.
A goodly and beautiful land we possess. We can raise anything which will
grow in this temperate zone. Our lands are fat and not exhausted.
Artificial manures we do not need, and they are scarcely known among us.
In thickly populated Germany and Switzerland hillsides are spaded where
too steep for the plough, and the husbandman succeeds in that method
upon small holdings. The French peasant, to whom ten acres is a
good-sized farm, does not plough his land, but turns it over, away down
deep, fourteen inches or so, with a bent bill-hook, and he succeeds, and
he and his family are independent and save money. We have room in
Canada, not speaking of the North-West, for millions upon millions of
persons, who will cultivate many patches of land now unused or in
pasture. Health, independence and success await those who will get upon
our lands and make an honest, downright manly effort.