_July 2d, 1868._
Alas for the poetry of farming! All the songs of milkmaids must be now
listened for in the old English poets. The whetting of the mower’s
scythe is almost over—quite over on my farm! Instead of that, one
hears the sharp rattle of the mower, and sees the driving-man quite at
his ease riding round and round the meadow, for all the world as if he
were out airing. Whereas, heretofore, two acres would be counted a
large day’s work, ten and twelve are easily accomplished now!
Nor is the contrast less remarkable in all the after-work. When I was
a boy, I was placed in line with all the men that could be mustered,
to shake out the hay with forks; and after a few hours, all hands were
called to go over the ground and turn it. To do this rapidly, and yet
so that the bottom side should really come to the top, was no small
knack. Now, a _tedder_, with one man riding, will literally do the
work of ten men, and do it far better than the most expert can. Have
you ever seen a tedder? I have a perfect one. The grass rolls up
behind it and foams, I was going to say, like water behind the wheels
of a steamer. The grass leaps up and whirls as if it were amazingly
tickled with such dealings. The result is, that unless the grass is
very heavy, and the weather very bad, you may cut your hay in the
morning and get it into your barn before night, in far better
condition than it used to be when it required never less than two, and
generally a part of three days to cure it.
But I have forgotten the _horse-rake_. Instead of the old-fashioned,
long-handled rake, and the five or six men pulling and hauling to get
the grass into windrows, that same fellow, with that same horse, rides
his luxurious rake, and in a fifth part of the time formerly required
puts it into equally good shape. Indeed, haying, if it has lost its
poetry, has also lost its drudgery. A man can now manage a hundred
acres of grass easier than he formerly could twenty.
The only thing that remains to be made easy is pitching on and off the
load. It is true that horse-forks have been invented, but I have never
seen any that did their work well; and in my barn, at any rate, the
old work of pitching and mowing remains; and if you wish to know what
fun is, get on to the mow, under the slate roof of my barn, on a hot
day, and let Tim pitch off hay as he will if I give him the wink. You
will have to step lively, and even then you will often be seen
emerging from heaps of hay thrown over you, like a rat from a bunch of
oakum. And then it is so pleasant, when a man is all a-sweat, to have
his shirt filled with hay-seed, each particular particle of which
makes believe that it is a flea, and wiggles and tickles upon every
square inch of his skin, until he is half desperate.
It is the 2d of July, and my grass is all cut, and the last load is
rolling into the barn while I write. How sweet it smells! How jolly
the children are that have been mounted on the top of the load! And
their little scarlet jackets peep out from their nest while Tim stands
guard and nurse. A child that has not ridden up from the meadow to the
barn on a load of hay has yet to learn one of the luxuries of exultant
childhood. What care they for jolts, when the whole load is a vast and
multiplex spring? The more the wagon jounces the better they like it!
Then come the bars, leading into the lane with maple-trees on each
side. The limbs reach down, and the green leaves kiss the children
over and over again. So would I, if I were a green leaf, and not
consider myself so green after all! And so the load slowly rolls up
the bill. There is no such thing as momentum in an ox. He is always at
a dead pull and at the very hardest. But the children like it. The
slower they move the longer is the ride! Let them take all the comfort
they can. By and by they will be grown, and own fine carriages, and
roll in style through the streets. But there is many a fair face that
rides in a silk-lined coach, with a sad heart, and would go back if
she could, O, how gladly, to her joyous ride on a load of hay!