A DAY ON A GERMAN FARM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3016, 3 January 1912, Page 23

A DAY ON A GERMAN FARM.

In a very interesting .article in “Summer Days on a German Farm," Helen Pitkin trenertz thus describes in tho Times-Demo-crat of St. Louis (U.S.) a day on a farm in Alsace:—

It is just 3 in tho morning, at th© beginning ol harvest, when the Meischtcr or Maitre rises and goes from door to door to waken the sons and the army or field hande. "Ihe wit© must be up, too, to make cofteo and slice broad before they go forth. While waiting for this, the 24 horses are ted, watered, and harnessed to huge wains, which, with rattling chains, lumber out of the sound-enclosing court —for the stone walls are high—with the heaviness of artillery. Tiler© are brief commands, sententious directions regarding tho work in the sheaves, snapping of Whips, and nickering of animals. Tho dogs are concerned, too, and they bus} themselves with all proceedings. A dozen huge carts lumber out of the court, each accompanied by two men walking at their horses’ heads. Then all is silence.

But alone, in the gloam of a. spacious kitchen, the fanner’s wit© goes about tier work for the day, not calling her daughters until the last moment, which is 5 o'clock. By this time die men are all back for breakfast; bowls of milk, soup, hunches of bread and butter, and a pony of brandy,Nor, for a change, meat soup swimming with breadrafts, and a glass of wine. In the interval between their sortie and this meal, the daughters have scrubbed with a brush the 25 large milk- cans that must bo filled and sent into town live miles away, to the soli tiers’ barracks and other where. This off thieir hands, one girl goes to tho rooms, her special duty, and sets them to rights; another goes to the milkroom for the care of the butter, eggs, cream cheese, cream; a third sits down to a two-bushel bairei of potatoes, and begins to pare them. The mother, meanwhile, begins the workmen’s and family’s dinner. At an odd moment coffee is drunk, but nothing else taken. The starving workmen appear for dinner at bebest of tho far-sounding bo'll of the roof, rang from one of the halls. They have vegetables', sniokod meat or sausages, lettuce, and wine, and broad ad infinitum. A domestic washes tho dishes and pots, and she is at it all day. The workmen are served on a cieal table in the kitchen without the ceremonies of tablecloth or napkins. The family dinner follows; soup, fresh meat, several vegetables, salad, wine pressed fiom tho farm vineyards, a custard or tart, cake, coffee, with home-made kirsohwasser (ibis is a distillation of the cherries that abound in the great orchards). Onoe a week it is tho duty of a young woman of 19 to make the bread for the household.

The young girl, without any pretence at looking like a pretty fancyKl-ress baker, dons gingham bloomers ftnd white blous'o and a muslin cap that covers her entire coiffure. She then pitches in, literally. No word is too strong to describe the manner in which she attacks the trough of dough over which she bonds, punching, kneading, manipulating knowing by custom just the proportions and when to add the homo-milled wheat flour The trough is long and deep, but it i» not possible to tell you just how many pounds of dead weight dough ina&s contains. After it has been sufficiently , assimilated she breaks it off in even quantities, and, flouring 25 bushel drops a lump in eaoh. The bread-room is then o!ored for several hours, while the dough rises; and the little baker turns her attention to the mammoth brick and stone oven in the second kitchen —a man s work it is, mind you, if over there was sex in work! Faggots are inserted in the door and lighted; to these more are added, till the oven turns red and then white with heat. It is now ready to receive the incipient loaves, the flames having died down and the even being just at tho baking temperature. On a long-handled shovel the loaves arc turned out, minus the basket, into the deep hollow one by one, with professional haste. In an’hour and a-haif the great loaves are baked and removed with the shovel to the baskets where they cool. The loaves are a foot and a-half in diameter, and nearly a foot thick; regular Boguo bread, to suffice country appetites. And 25 of those loaves are consumed every seven days in tins houscll0 As this is tho home of a eo-called rich farmer, a laundress is afforded as well as a dish-washing kitchen slavey The former derives lOd a day for her labaurs. Sheis at them most of the time, but one of the daughters of the house gives one entire day a week to ironing the finer articles* It is now time for tho “gonter,” or taste as the French labourers call it, and in the army files for thick slices of milkcheese, broad, and wine. _ .This is at 4 o’clock, just when the spirits lag, so all good farmers offer this stimulus. And now the little dairymaid of 17 goes again at the hn'Tg milk receptacles, scrubbing them so that they mav be filled at once for the eveninrr delivery of five miles. Perhaps there is” a canning of asparagus, gooseberries, cherries, quetchos, mirabelles, or prunes to engatre tho mother, or the baking of cake. At all events, she is not idle, save for half an hour, when each member of the family in turn takes a rest. , The orchards arc extensive, so teat one is surfeited with all these fruits and others; and one of the girls can climb a tree as neatlv as a man and bring down loads 01 delicious cherries and the like. At 6 the 17-vear-old slips a jug of eider oil to her handlebar and cycles out into the fields to bring refreshment to the men. She is

back again in a trice to recommence the interminable paring of potatoes. If there seems not to Ire enough sho runs out to the great kitchen garden and digs up a bushel of them. And there she sits paring and cutting, such a mass of th© tuoer as one never dreamed could be consumed in a- day. But when one serves and notes the appetites to be sufficed no quantity seems unreasonable.

A dinner plate will bo twice filled from rim to rim with them, cooked as they are, after being freshly dug, in the creamiest of country butter. Th© workmen have their “abendcsseii,” or supper, about 9 o’clock; a soup with bread shoes, potatoes, and milk. The family eat potatoes, a turkey platter twice filled with Uieni; home-made sausages, cream cheese, gooseberry tarts and milk. There is a coffee pot on the stove all day, and it is liberally patronised. It is 10 or 11 o’clock when we go. to bed, nobody seem,ing to be very tired, with all the mass of work done. Nor do the workmen remain up longer out in their quarters, tor they know they are to be roused at 3 by the voice of the master they obey implicitly. The last hour of the day is given to the newspapers, three of which come, in I 1 rench and German, dally. All the girls have the manners e-xpected of a convent-bred maiden ; nor would one ever suspect that each and every one, when work comes thick and fast by reason of impending storm threatening a crop, has worked in the field alongside the men! There is kitchen gardening, too, to bs done at odd moments, with tiowerg strewn between, for women aim to give beauty to their work whenever possible. Hoeing, planting, weeding, these are the German woman’s labours, aind most of them take joy in it, despite the monotony, though to be sure growing things offer less of monotony than household drudging. Perhaps one reason for the content in their existence is their resignation; every woman knows that nothing but death may save her. History has repeated itself for too many centuries to allow Hope to enter into its own. As scon as a child can toddle it is given duties which increase year by year. Schooling itself is difficult; rising to ride in with the milk waggon at 5 a.m., remaining at school until tho last waggon at 6 p.m. returns—and this in heat and cold, snow or rain. These are long hours for a growing child, but education in Germany is, wisely, compulsory. The jxKiir are glad to get their children hack again when the prescribed schooling has been absorbed; th© boy must later go into th© army for three years at a salary of 2£d a day, just when he could prove most uaeiful to the farm. The girl rolls up her sleeves, which stay so until tho end. Her marriage makes no difference;' she goes into tho new condition with her eyes open and no illusions. There can bo few illusions about ovens, pans, and th© scrubbing brush. I have seen a woman of 23 with the mem of 40; bronzed, wrinkled, gaunt, ungainly, who mothers throe children, cooks, washes and irons, cleans th© stables, and milks 18 cows twice a day. Her husband, whom she also assists in the field during planting and harvest eras, is weary of fc'-.e drudgery which is one-half hors, and would ©aso up. But she is wound up to go, and can no more arrest her activities than sh© can her heart s action. There i s no joy in her work, none in her life. I admire her outlook over hill and! dal©, stretching far beyond her noisome dung heap. She was surprised to know that there was anything pretty in her vicinage She looked out at the green landscape with dull eyes; “I never noticed, sne said. Thus may toil become dangcirous, working poisons of apathy into the acuter consciousness.