“5H chores -- the youngsters on neighboring farms had similar duties. Without actually putting our conclusions into words, we probably accepted it as an essential feature of growing up on a farm.

Early May found Island farmers making ready to "get out on the land"

‘in preparation for seeding and planting. The first implement to be used, when the ground had dried and solidified sufficiently to bear the weight of a team, was the disc Marrow} followed by the spike and the spring_ tooth, for finer cultivation. I was about twelve when I was first permitted to drive the disc, and later the other two. After the grain had been sown, I

_ drove the roller in the final ground-smoothing operation. There was a& considerable degree of prestige among others of my age in being entrusted with a piece of machinery hauled by a team of horses. It was, therefore a pronounced drop in status, when potato planting got under way, to find myself relegated to dropping "sets" as the plow opened the furrows. For a youngster, this was a back-breaking task; for an adult it was sheer punishment. The sets had to properly spaced from twelve to fifteen inches apart. To accomplish this, it was imperative that the planter work close

to the ground; dropping them from an upright position was to see them bounce, which required stooping and replacing them correctly. This meant that the plow would be delayed on the covering round -- a development /which the owner of the field, who usually drove the plow, took a decidedly dim view. The spacing round gave us a brief respite during which we tried to regain something approaching a “i dibnit? posture.

Our Spring school vacation was always timed to coincide with the planting period. And, since most of us, in addition to our home planting, were sent to work on neighboring farms, vacation represented three weeks of strenuous labor. All of which probably had some bearing on our willingness to return to the classroom at its end. The root crops were planted soon

after the potato season, but this work was done by mechanical means, so