But I set out to talk of the work on the farm. The threshing was mostly
done in winter with the hickory flail, one shock of fifteen sheaves
making a flooring. On the dry cold days the grain shelled easily. After
a flooring had been thrashed over at least three times, the straw was
bound up again in sheaves, the floor completely raked over and the grain
banked up against the side of the bay. When the pile became so large it
was in the way, it was cleaned up, that is, run through the fanning
mill, one of us shovelling in the grain, another turning the mill, and a
third measuring the grain and putting it into bags, or into the bins of
the granary. One winter when I was a small boy Jonathan Scudder threshed
for us in the barn on the hill. He was in love with my sister Olly Ann
and wanted to make a good impression on the "old folks." Every night at
supper Father would say to him, "Well, Jonathan, how many shock today?"
and they grew more and more, until one day he reached the limit of
fourteen and he was highly complimented on his day's work. It made an
impression on Father, but it did not soften the heart of Olly Ann. The
sound of the flail and the fanning mill is heard in the farmers' barns
no more. The power threshing machine that travels from farm to farm now
does the job in a single day--a few hours of pandemonium, with now and
then a hand or an arm crushed in place of the days of leisurely swinging
of the hickory flail.

The first considerable work in spring was sugar-making, always a happy
time for me. Usually the last half of March, when rills from the melting
snow began to come through the fields, the veins of the sugar maples
began to thrill with the spring warmth. There was a general awakening
about the farm at this time: the cackling of the hens, the bleating of
young lambs and calves, and the wistful lowing of the cows. Earlier in
the month the "sap spiles" had been overhauled, resharpened, and new
ones made, usually from bass wood. In my time the sap gouge was used