|
I HAVE got my oats seeded;
not very many, only about ten acres. I hope that they will turn out a good
crop. Now I am breaking every day and shall, I trust, get a good bit broken
and backset ready to crop next spring.
I have a hired man coming to
me to-morrow, a young lad, the son of a Scotch doctor; he has only just come
out, and he is waiting to try and get land. In the meantime he is coming to
me for 5 dollars a month, and all found, of course.
He will be a help to me if he
will work, but I do not know how he will like turning out every day at 5
a.m., and this must be done, for there is much to look to before one can
have breakfast and begin the regular work on the farm.
We have been very busy lately
over the school business; we have had two meetings. One day I left home at 9
a.m. and only got back at 12 p.m. That day I was riding a bucking horse, and
never knew whether I should land in the saddle or on the prairie; it was not
a pleasant experience, but by the time I reached home all the buck was out
of him, and he has been much more amenable ever since.
The riding plough will come
in useful now for back-setting and stubble ploughing in the summer, but for
breaking I can do just as good work with the ordinary one, and it is not so
heavy. The ground is very hard, and we are wanting rain badly.
We had an election at our
house a week ago, to elect a district Counsellor for the Local Improvement
Board, so I hope that they will soon begin to mark out the roads and grade
them; they are badly wanted, for the old trails are full of mud-holes.
On Saturday when I got home I
found three men asleep on the floor, they had been stuck in one mud-hole
after another, and had taken a week to get as far as my place from town. The
poor fellows were pretty well disheartened, and since they left at noon
to-day, I heard that they were stuck again 3 miles up the trail. How they
will get to the homestead allotted them, some 8o miles out, I cannot
conceive. My garden is not finished seeding yet, but I shall get my potatoes
in in a couple of weeks' time so as to have some early; this must seem funny
to you, as by that time you will probably be eating not only new potatoes,
but green peas as well. We have a duck for dinner tomorrow, minus, alas!
those nice adjuncts. This duck fell to a neighbour's gun, so he is coming to
help eat it, very pleased not to have the cooking of it himself. |
