borders the harbor, and there stand the ferry-house, and its flag-staff and boats.

Looking to the left, the fir-crowned and fern-covered hills slope down to Ford's Point, jutting out into deep water, which flows up for miles till the turn above the mill shuts in the view.

But we must not wait, if we mean to catch any flounders before the tide turns, and so we hurry down. to the beach and along the hard sand bordering the bay under the broken cliffs, and are soon shaking hands with the cheery landlord of the Sea-View Hotel, who has been watching us from his veranda ever since we descended the hill from Diamond Point.

CHAPTER V.

Hay-harvest-Timothy-grass-Permanent pasture-Hay-making by express-The mower and reaper-Hay-stacks as novelties-Wheat-harvest-Thrashing -The "thrashing crowd "_" Headers" and "selfbinders "-Twine-binders and home-grown flax-Green food for cows-Indian corn, vetches-Wild-oats in wheat-Tar-weed the new enemy-Cost of harvesting-By hired machines-By purchased machines-Cost of wheat-growing in the Willamette Valley.

NEITHER the first nor the second year did hay-harvest begin with us till after the first week in July. We did not shut the cattle off the hay-fields till the end of February, so that there was a great growth of grass to be made in four months and a half.

How different our hay-fields are from those in the old country! I should dearly like to show to some of these farmers a good old-fashioned Devonshire or Worcestershire field, with its thick, solid undergrowth and waving heads. I should like them to see how much feed there was after the crop was cut.

Here timothy-grass is everything to the farmer. Certainly, the old-country man would open his eyes to see a crop waist-high, the heavy heads four to seven inches long, and giving two tons to the acre. And he would revel in laying aside for good and all that anxiety as to weather which has burdened his life ever since he took scythe and pitchfork in hand. We expect nothing else but dewy nights and brilliant sunshine, so that the habit is to cut one day, pile the grass into huge cocks

THE MOWER AND REAPER.

63

Hay

in

the same day, and carry it to the barn the next. stacks are unknown; the whole crop is stored away the barn; and you may see sixty, eighty, or a hundred tons under the one great roof, and no fear of heating or burning before the farmer's eyes.

The glory of the scythe has departed. Every little farmer has his mower, or mower and reaper combined; or else, if he can not afford to pay two hundred dollars or thereabout for his machine, he hires one from his more fortunate neighbor, and pays him "six bits". that is, seventy-five cents per acre for cutting his crop. Wood's, McCormick's, or the Buckeye, are the favorites here.

Our own machine, with one pair of stout horses, cuts from nine to twelve acres a day, according to the thickness of the crop and the level or hilly nature of the ground. It looks easy-just riding up and down the field all day-but try it, and you will find you have to give close attention all the time, to be ready to lift your knives over a lumpy bit of ground or round a stump, and to cut your turns and corners clean; and there are no springs to your seat, and a mower is not the easiest carriage in the world.

Nor is it light work to follow the horse hay-rake all day, lifting the teeth at every swath. Pitching hay is about the same work all the world over, I think; but at home one does not expect to make acquaintance with quite so many snakes, which come slipping down and twisting and writhing about as the hay is pitched into the wagon. It is true they are harmless, but I don't like them, all the same.

We put up a big hay-stack each year, in spite of the most dismal prophecies from our neighbors that the