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I THINK that I shall be
cutting my crop next week, my neighbours are cutting theirs at present.
Round here the crops are good, but near the town they do not look worth
cutting, they are so full of weeds. In this district we shall be in full
swing next week. My oats are not bad, but they might have been better;
anyhow, I hope I shall have enough for food and not have any to buy, for
oats at 45 cents a bushel take all the gilt off the gingerbread.
I have been over all my
ploughed land twice with the disc. I shall have to go over it again twice,
but I must stop now as a neighbour wants to use the implement and I can
finish later on.
My heifer is due to calve
soon. She is a beauty, quite a picture, and my last calf is equally good, so
they will set me up in stock. The cow gives us all the milk we require and
more butter than we can eat, so we salt it down in earthenware pots, for use
when perhaps we might not have enough.
We are sorry you do not think
much of the photos last sent to you. With houses all round you the situation
looks very lonely, but it is not really so desolate as it looks. We have
nice neighbours if a little way off, some of them are always dropping in.
Why, last Sunday'# we had over twenty visitors.
A few nights ago we hitched
up at 6.30 p.m. and went to the store for mails, then drove by moonlight to
the D----'s, our Scotch friends, woke them up at a quarter to eleven, had
some tea and got back home at midnight. It was a lovely drive. I suppose
that you at home would think us crazy, but at this time of the year night is
the pleasantest time, cool and no mosquitoes.
Yesterday it was 88° in the
shade at 8 a.m., so that the cool nights come as a great boon.
It is rather hard to give you
an exhaustive list of all our neighbours, they are so scattered. There is an
English family 2 miles east of us, husband and wife, three girls, and two
boys; then we have three other families, 3 miles east also, they are
Americans; a Canadian family 2 miles north; these with the captain and his
nephew, our Scotch boys and the R----'s, form the nucleus of our colony.
We all meet at times, either
when we go to the store or to church at a place called Car, 2 miles distant,
where a service has been held lately by a young student. Our school-house is
nearly built; it is supposed to open on September 3 next, and it will be
used as a church on Sundays.
I have been very busy the
last few days taking the old shack to pieces. I am going to build a larger
kitchen with it; the one we have is too small for the hot weather; the
cottage will perhaps not then look so cramped. We were quite offended at
your saying that it looked cramped. Why, it is one of the largest places out
here.
I regret also that you think
that I look as if I had not enough to eat. I assure you I get plenty, and
besides I have an uncommonly good appetite.
At present I am feeding up
two pigs with a view to eating them in the winter. In the summer one does
get pulled down a bit what with the intense heat, a good proportion of hard
work, and the constant and forced eating of salted pork most of the time.
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