First, poems and pictures on nature in general, such as God of the Open Air by Henry Van Dyke, Back to Nature, Out in the Open, and Better Things. Then several pages are devoted to Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter with a page for each month of the year. February and July are still empty. Poets seem not to like to write about those months.
Next, and my favorite of all, are sixteen pages filled with beautiful pictures and poems called On the Farm, and a dozen blank pages left to be filled, for I suppose I’ll be clipping and pasting the rest of my life. The remaining subjects in the book are Trees, Flowers, Birds, Gardens, and Night.
When I get homesick for the farm I usually find something in my book that comforts me. Had I been a boy instead of a girl, wild horses could not have dragged me from the farm, but after Father’s death, my brother married and wished to continue farming, so Mother and we three girls moved to town. My mother and younger sister being invalids, my older sister and I decided we must have our work at home, so we care for elderly ladies, three at a time, making our home a House of Seven Women instead of a House of Seven Gables. My sister looks after the nursing end of it, while I go ahead with the cooking.
When I read the Letters From Farm Women--which I enjoy so much--life on the farm with all its ups and downs does sound so attractive. Hard work? That's everywhere. We make our own garden and used $60.00 worth of vegetables from it last year. We can everything from dandelion greens to soup and blackberries from the surrounding country. We mow our own lawn and do our own laundry work, and tend our own furnace.
We think we live in an ideal country town with its paved streets, beautiful trees, a lake, rolling golf links, churches and schools, nestled in a valley surrounded by hills. I try to be content, yet my heart goes out to the farm. Quoting from my book:
"There's a little farm that nestles in the shadow of a hill,
And a group of memories haunt me; I am sure they always will.
For a boundless love, far-reaching, stretches toward me where I roam,
And my heart is lonely, sometimes, for that little farm is Home!"