Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I shall be away three weeks this time," he said. On the Sunday afternoon he went off again. He was more determined in his manner now more like himself. We were through with the field-work at last, and the potato-planting was done; after that, Nils and the lad could manage the daily work by themselves, and I went up to my new work among the timber. Good days these were for me, all through.
But not before a good many weeks, for the two boys didn't get play-day again in a long while. There was work to do picking rocks for the neighboring farmers; and then came potato-planting time when they could help Ben as he worked for Deacon Brown, who always paid them well in potatoes that kept them through the winter.
Now, around Good Friday, the talk would be of potato-planting; and again, in proper order, one heard of peas and runner-beans, and so through the summer fruits and plants, to the ripening of plums and apples, and the lifting of potatoes and carrots and parsnips. In all these ways the parish, if not a true village, seemed quite a country place twenty years ago, and its people were country people.
The girls had some joke between them which Ben was trying in vain to fathom. The older son told how much milk a certain Alderney cow had given, and Mr. Stanley, quite changed now as he sat at his own table from the rather grim farmer of the afternoon, revealed a capacity for a husky sort of fun, joking Ben about his potato-planting and telling in a lively way of his race with me. As for Mrs.
With all your pudding-mixing and your potato-planting you are moon-mad like the rest of us." She made a disdainful little gesture. "Why, I never planted a potato in my life." "Don't scoff, dear lady," he returned warningly; "too great literalness is the sin of womankind, you know." "But I don't care in the least for vegetable-growing," she persisted seriously. The humour twinkled in his eyes.
He found he could not go out to his potato-planting and forget all about it, as he would have liked to have done something would not let him; and there he was sitting crouched up and sorrowful on the steps of the stairs, when Mr. Cope and all the rest were gathered in Alfred's room, a church for the time. Matilda and Ellen had set out the low table with the fair white cloth, and Mr.
Corn-and potato-planting and the sowing of spring wheat was comparatively light work, while the nesting birds sang cheerily, grass and flowers covered the marshes and meadows and all the wild, uncleared parts of the farm, and the trees put forth their new leaves, those of the oaks forming beautiful purple masses as if every leaf were a petal; and with all this we enjoyed the mild soothing winds, the humming of innumerable small insects and hylas, and the freshness and fragrance of everything.
They convinced me that some of the great things I had expected of my pilgrimage were realizable possibilities. Why, I had walked right into the heart of as fine a family as I have seen these many days. I remained with them the entire day following the potato-planting.
To picture the great potato-planting machine, drawn by four horses, or an electric motor, ploughing the furrow, cutting and dropping and covering the potatoes, and planting a score of acres a day! To picture the great potato-digging machine, run by electricity, perhaps, and moving across a thousand-acre field, scooping up earth and potatoes, and dropping the latter into sacks!
He explained the process of potato-planting: cutting them into pieces so that there was an eye in each piece, and so forth. "Having done this," said Mr Button, "you just chuck the pieces in the ground; their eyes grow, green leaves `pop up, and then, if you dug the roots up maybe, six months after, you'd find bushels of potatoes in the ground, ones as big as your head, and weeny ones.
Word Of The Day