Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba — 25 - Letter 25
* * * * * August 17th.
The Farm with all its toils and pleasures is a thing of the past;
we were both very low when we turned our backs upon it and its inhabitants just a week ago.
We have been in such robust health the whole of our three months, hardly a headache or finger-ache.
Our maid-of-all-work life has suited us, and we have acquired such an immense deal of practical knowledge that for those reasons alone, we might be gratified and pleased we came.
Since then we have been staying with Mike in Minnesota, where we were either riding or driving (anything to do with horses) all day long.
Driving four miles, jumping the horses over a pole, taking them down to water, having a mule race (which was truly amusing as the course was just in front of the house and several bolted home), and driving, a gang plough, were a few of the "diversions" found for us.
Our host was most kind and anxious to make us comfortable;
he worked heaven and earth to get his house ready, the contractors having taken so much more time than they said; anyhow, he turned the carpenters out of the house the day previous to our arrival, carried in the furniture, nailed up mosquito blinds, and did many things himself, so that everything should be in spick and span order.
As these men, Mike having two partners, are farming thirteen thousand acres, they are on a much larger scale as regards buildings, numbers of horses, etc. , to anything we have seen before.
Their living-houses are about double the size of C---- Farm; they have also huge stables, which A---- fancies will be cold in winter, but have a most imposing appearance, as have also their implement house, sheds, etc. The land seemed much the same as ours, a rich black loam, but very much wetter, marshes everywhere.
They have broken two thousand acres since the beginning of June, and were busy, whilst we were there, cutting hay, Mike hoping he had already got over five hundred ton up!
We drove one day to see a neighbouring farm which is said to be the "boss" one in all the country, belonging to a man who has been out five years.
He was just starting to cut his two square miles of wheat, and we watched the seven self-binding machines with great interest.
They seem as light as a reaper, and the machinery comparatively not intricate.
We were driven through some standing corn, which was rather agonizing to our British ideas, but he thought nothing of it.
The straw was four and a half feet high, and he hopes to get forty-two bushels to the acre.
His farm being on the Snake River, and having many creeks running through as drainage, is a great advantage.
His vats were pronounced no better, if so good, as ours at C---- Farm.
We remained at Warren a day longer than we had intended, as we got to the station just in time to see our train move off.
We accused Mike's Irish groom, who is quite a character, of bringing round the carriage too late on purpose.
If he did, I think all the party forgave him; we were very happy, it gave us another night of A----'s society.
Mike was low at our going.
Poor man!
one cannot be much surprised at his liking to keep us, as, besides the fascinations of ladies' society, he has no neighbours whatsoever, and, excepting the two men he has in the house, there is not a gentleman nearer than Winnipeg.
He offered me seventy-two dollars a month to be his housekeeper.
E---- was to have two dollars a week as parlour-maid, which she considers an insult; or she might have seventy-five cents a day if she would drive the ploughs.
Servants and labourers get higher wages there than in Manitoba, all the men were averaging thirty-five to forty dollars a month and their keep.
They were all Swedes and Germans, of whom there is an enormous colony in the state.
We are now trying to spend our day at Council Bluff, a large junction of the Grand Pacific Railway, having come in here at 8 o'clock this morning, and our train to Denver not leaving till 7 o'clock this evening.
The hotel is right on the station.
The weather is so hot, that as yesterday, at St. Paul's, where we also had to spend a whole day, we have never summoned up courage to go beyond the door.
It was suggested we might take the tram and go up into the City; but E---- has a notion that one city is much like another, particularly on a hot day.
It is curious how Americans live in hotels; there are several families in this, and if my letter is not very intelligible you must forgive me, as I am writing in the grand corridor to try and catch the slight draughts of air blowing through, at the same time that half a dozen children are playing up and down.
The scenery yesterday from St. Paul's all along the banks of the Missouri was very pretty.
We both of us sat outside the Pullman as long as daylight lasted, feasting our eyes oh the water, trees, etc. The height and luxuriance of the latter seemed quite incomprehensible after the total absence of forest scenery for so many months.
It is pretty round here; and by the time we get to the Rocky Mountains we shall have got beyond the stage of thinking a hillock a mountain, and fairish-sized trees not so wonderful after all; but at the present moment we are in that pleasing state, ready to admire anything and everything.
We hope to get to Denver on Saturday night, and rest there Sunday and part of Monday, and we also hope to get to Church there.
Mike offered to drive us into Warren last Sunday; but as the service was a Swedish Presbyterian, we didn't think we should be much edified.
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