“The 25th day of July,
    Sow your turnips, wet or dry”?

As the 25th fell on Sunday, I tried to placate the agricultural poet by sowing half on the 24th and the other half on the 26th, but it was no use.  Whether the turnip god was offended by the fractured rule and refused his blessing, or whether the dry August and September prevented full returns, is more than I can say.  Certain it is that I had but a half crop of turnips and a beggarly batch of beets to comfort me and the hogs.

Some little consolation, however, was found in Polly’s joy over a small crop of currants which her yearling bushes produced.  I also heard rumors of a few cherries which turned their red cheeks to the sun for one happy day, and then disappeared.  Cock Robin’s breast was red the next morning, and on this circumstantial evidence Polly accused him.  He pleaded “not guilty,” and strutted on the lawn with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and his suspected breast as much in evidence as a pouter pigeon’s.  A jury, mostly of blackbirds, found the charge “not proven,” and the case was dismissed.  I was convinced by the result of this trial that the only safe way would be to provide enough cherries for the birds and for the people too, and ordered fifty more trees for fall planting.  I found by experience, that if one would have bird neighbors (and who would not?), he must provide liberally for their wants and also for their luxuries.  I have stolen a march as to the cherries by planting scores of mulberry trees, both native and Russian.  Birds love mulberries even better than they do cherries, and we now eat our pies in peace.  To make amends for this ruse, I have established a number of drinking fountains and free baths; all of which have helped to make us friends.

In August I sold, near the top of a low market, 156 young hogs.  At $4.50 per hundred, the bunch netted me $1807.  They did not weigh quite as much as those sold the previous autumn, and I found two ways of accounting for this.  The first and most probable was that fall pigs do not grow so fast as those farrowed in the spring.  This is sufficient to account for the fact that the herd average was twenty pounds lighter than that of its predecessor.  I could not, however, get over the notion that Anderson’s nervousness had in some way taken possession of the swine (we have Holy Writ for a similar case), and that they were wasted in growth by his spirit of unrest.  He was uniformly kind to them and faithful with their food, but there was lacking that sense of cordial sympathy which should exist between hog and man if both would appear at their best.  Even when Anderson came to their pens reeking with the rich savor of the food they loved, their ears would prick up (as much as a Chester White’s ears can), and with a “woof!” they would shoot out the door, only to return in a moment with the greatest confidence.  I never heard that “woof” and saw the stampede without looking around for the “steep place” and the “sea,” feeling sure that the incident lacked only these accessories to make it a catastrophe.