balmy days of summer, rural living in winter was at times a test of en- 
     
     durance. 
     
    

    
     One of our major winter tusks was "getting out" the year's supply of 
     
     firewood,-- our main source of heat. Over several generations of intensive 
     
     cultivation, many farms had been denuded of everything except a few shade 
     
     trees, which meant that their owners had to make a deal with the proprietor 
     
     of some nearby wood lot for the necessary cordage. For years, our family 
     
     obtained our supply from the late Donald MacArthur of Elmwood, the last 
     
     surviving descendant of one of the original settlers. ie chopped down the 
     
     trees -- birch, maple, or beech =< trimmed off the branches, and cut the 
     
     trunks into eight-foot lengths with a cross-cut saw -- a strenuous bit of 
     
     labor by any standard. I can speak with authority of this, Since I spent 
     
     many hours on the end of that saw. It was my fervent wish that, by some 
     
     magic carpet, I could be transported to a place very far removed, and very 
     
     warm, while this work was in progress. The time was mid- or late January; 
     
     the north wind whistled unceasingly down from the hills of Lot Thirty; ears, 
     
     nose, fingers, and toes smarted; hands and feet quickly grew numb. It was 
     
     always with profound relief: that I helped wrestle the last log of the 
     
     stack aboard the wood sleigh and saw it started on the journey toward the 
     
     house. During the last year or two that I lived at home, Donald decided 
     
     against selling any more of his dwindling wood supply, and we converted to 
     
     coal -- a step that had my hearty approval. 
     
    

    
     Although getting out the wood was a@ laborious and unpleasant job, it was 
     
     considerably less arduous than the winter activity that followed: digging 
     
     mussel mud through the river ice. Mussel mud was a valuable supplement to 
     
     the stable manure routinely applied to the soil; all progressive farmers 
     
     saw to it that their fields received an application every four or five 
     
     years. My father and Ambrose Collins, a neighbor and a descensant of a 
     
    
   
   
    
     pioneer family, owned a mud-diggver on the halves. From the beginning of