March 27—­Gladdened, when I woke to hear the sound of birds.  The robin here is not the Scottish redbreast, being much larger and with a different note.  People I spoke to at church yesterday said we are having an unusually late season.  I am weary of the sight of the snow, which is now wasting in the sun.  Heard frogs at a distance last night.  The long winter is a serious offset to farming in Canada.

April 3—­Jabez with Sloot came this morning to start burning our fallow, and before dark we had made great progress.  There is enough snow and ice left to make it easy for the oxen to haul logs.

April 8—­By ourselves once more; the burning and the making of potash finished yesterday.  There is now clearance enough on all three lots to make sure of raising sufficient crop to keep us, so it will not be so much a work of life and death to keep at the felling of trees.  Chopping them is most laborious, but burning them is worse—­as much as flesh and blood can bear.  The burning we had in the fall was to get a patch of land cleared for sowing.  This time we were prepared to save the ashes.  Gordon set up three leaches on the edge of the pond, and as the logs were burned the ashes were gathered and hauled by ox-sled to fill them.  Ramming the ashes into the leaches as solid as possible and then pouring water upon them fell to me and the women, the men attending to the burning, the raking of the ashes together, and hauling them.  After soaking all night, or longer, the leaches are tapped, when the lye runs into a trough, made by hollowing as big a pine as we could find.  From the trough the lye is dipped into the kettle, under which a fierce fire had to be kept.  As the lye boiled, the water in it passed off in clouds of steam, more lye being poured in to keep it full.  By-and-by a sticky mass could be felt at the bottom of the kettle, which was ladled into cast iron coolers, and became solid.  This is called black salts, is barreled, and shipped to Britain, where it is in great demand.  The quantity of lye needed to make a hundred-weight of black-salts astonished me.  I got ten cents a pound for what we made and that will keep us in provisions until we have our own wheat to take to mill.

April 9—­All glad of the Sabbath rest.  Warm, the soft maples red with buds.

April 15—­Been busy all week, mostly in clearing and levelling the burned land for sowing.  Sowed two bushels of oats this afternoon.  Drying winds and a hot sun.

April 20—­The rain needed to start grain came last night.  Moist and warm today with rapid growth.

April 22—­Planted potatoes.  Ailie and Alice getting the garden stuff in.

April 26—­Wonderful growth; nothing like it in Scotland.  There is no spring here; the jump is from winter to summer.  Our bridle-path to Yonge-street is so soft that oxen cannot be put on it.  Gordon goes back to Toronto on Monday to join the tradesman he was with in the fall, and who has sent for him.  He will have to walk, for Yonge-street, I am told, is a chain of bog-holes.