Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1879 — BURDETTE AMONG THE FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

BURDETTE AMONG THE FARMERS.

Mr. ThUtlepod’s Early Spring Experiences. Bob Burdette, of the Burlington Hawk-Eye, paints this pretty pasto-al picture: It is spring, and the annual warfare begins. Early in the morning the jocund farmer hies him to the field, and hunts around in the dead weeds and grass for the plow he left out there somewhere sometime last fall. When he finds it, he takes it to the shop to have it mended. When it is mended, he goes back into the field with it. Half way down the first furrow he lays, he runs the plow fairly into a big live oak root; the handles alternately break a rib on this side of him, and jab the breath out of him on the other, and the sturdy root, looking up out of the ground with a pleased smile of recognition, says cheerfully: “ Ah, Mr. Thistlepod, at it again, eh?” Fifty feet farther on he strikes a stone that doubles up the plow point like a piece of lead, and, while the amazed and breathless agriculturist leans, a limp heap of humanity, across the plow, the relic of the glacial period remarks, sleepily: “Ah ha; spring here already ? Glad you woke me up.” And then the granger sits down and patiently tries to tie on that plow point with a hickory withe, and while he pursues this fruitless task the friendly crow swoops down near enough to ask: “Goin’ to put this twenty in corn, this year, Mr. Thistlepod?” And, before he has time to answer the sable bird, a tiny grasshopper, wriggling out of a clod so full of eggs that they can’t bd counted, shouts briskly: “Here we are again, Mr. Thistlepod; dinner for 500,000,000,0000!” And then a slow-moving, but very positive, potato bug crawls out into the sunlight to see if the frost has faded his stripes, and says: “ The old-fashioned peachblow potatoes are the best for a sure crop, but the early rose should be planted for the first market.” Then several new kinds of bugs who haven’t made any record yet, climb over the fence, and come up to inquire about the staple crops of the neighborhood, and, before he can get through with them, Prof. Tice sends him a circular stating that there won’t be a drop of rain from the middle of May till the last of October. This almost stuns him, but he is beginning to feel a little resigned when a dispatch is received from the Department of Agriculture at Washington, saying that all indications point to a summer of unprecedented, almost incessant and long continued rains and floods, and advising him to plant no root crops at all. While he is trying to find words to express his emotion, a neighbor drops in to tell him that all the peach trees in the country are winter-killed, and that the hog cholera is raging fiercely in the northern part of the township. Then his wife comes out to tell him the dog has fallen into the well, and when the poor man gets to the door-yard his children with much shouting and excitement meet him and tell him there are a couple of cats, of the pole denomination, in the spring-house, and another under the barn. With tears and groans he returns to the field, but by that time it has begun to snow so hard he can’t see the horses when he stands at the plow. He is discouraged and starts for the house with his team, wiien he meets a man who bounces him for using a three-horse clevis he made himself, and wrings ten reluctant dollars out of him for it. When he reaches the house the drive-well man is waiting for him, and while he is settling with him a clock-peddler comes in, and a lightning-rod man, screened by the storm, climbs up on the $lO smokehouse and fastens $65 worth of light-ning-rods on it, and before the poor farmer can get his gun half loaded the bailiff comes in to tell him that he has been drawn on the jury. •