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Sketch of Marta and her father moving hay into the loft of the barn using a haysling her father rigged
"Among the interesting labour-saving devices father makes is the haysling, designed to hoist hay into the loft. Already in the fields where we load long rows of raked hay, he lays the network of rope in two sections, one on the bottom of the rack, the other of the half-full, clicking the iron coupling dead centre, saying "don't step on it"!
My job today is trampling down and pitchforking it as evenly as I can in between the huge forkfuls father cascades up. It looks like rain. "Is the centre firm?" he calls, "if it isn't, the load will slide out before we get home." Then he comes up to check, sinking to his knees all over, even in the centre! Ah, it's only the beginning: I can't step on it. He arranges and locks the upper section, "Don't step on it;" jumps down and proceeds as before, only now higher and higher. I'm scared to go close to the edge and he tells me not to be such a "rabbits foot", "Here, take it," he calls, I try, but half of it falls back on him. "You musn't be such a fullgeshat stocking," he says, looking at the clouds bearing down from the Pembina Hills...
We get the load in just before the shower! After Faspa we hoist it into the loft, me guiding Maude and Charlie, our most docile horses, diagonally across the large yard. They're pulling a rope attached via pulleys to the rail high along the loft. The top half goes in alright but the bottom one opens! "Whoa" father calls from the hole in the side of the loft though I can tell well enough by the change in tension in the rope and the horses who've gone through this often stop by themselves. But someone has to say something at prospect of getting it up by fork. Looking down on the pile spilled just between rack and loft, he scratches his head shoving his sweat-soaked hat askew, "Schweinarie!" (Schwein is pig. Piggery!)
Margaret comes to the rescue, pitching almost as big forkfuls up as father, and Betty and I carry, push and slide it along the smooth-worn wide plank floor to the back. It smells good, the sun-drenched hay, they dry well-beamed loft, and the freshness left by the shower, spilling in through the hole into the half-light, when our eyes adjust to it. Father comes up and says it's good, and Margaret "Hurry down, it's time to get the cows home!"

Sketch of a family watering their crops by hand
""Well, if it doesn't rain soon..." then father hauls a drum of water by stoneboat to the fields. So it won't slop over too much he toes a rope over a piece of canvas that covers it. We children like going the back way through cowfences and woods. We're watering the sunflower and potato patch."

Sketch of a woman and a young girl stooking wheat in their fields circa 1933

Sketch of a girl judging the time of day in order to bring the cows in from the fields
"When the sun is two hands high it's time to bring the cows home."