Lots of Work Good strength and acres. That's all we needed. A strong back and a very weak mind and you were all set. Oh, I worked at it all. But we didn't mind it. That's the only way we had to do it. We didn't put up a holler... . Woods work was done. When I started, it was the crosscut saw. And, believe me, all day at the end of that crosscut was pretty stiff. And a four- pound axe. You had to be a good man to swing that all day. [We used it,] oh, for a good number of years before the pulp saw come out. You've seen them, with the bend in the back. They were a wonderful attachment... . Now, if you passed a man one of those, today, he'd hit you with it. But we went to the woods and we cut our own stuff. We cut a lot of stuff, too. We used to cut sometimes 12 to 1,400 longers, fence poles. The whole farm there was one time fenced with the wood... . I worked out at that for neighbours. Stiff day, boys. But we were muscled up to it. I worked in the woods... the winter after I was married. That brings back a lot of memories. My father was there with me in the woods. Big man. He'd take what I'd lift and me sitting on it. By gosh, we put out a lot of stuff, and about a month later than that he dropped dead out in the yard. Digging mussel mud. We built a big digger - what we called a digger - a big, square frame with posts in the front. And we put her out in the river down here near the bridge in the oyster beds there. And a big capstan on her. Put the horse in the capstan and we hauled mud from that. Boy, that was a stiff job. A whole box full of that [wet mud] right out of the river. You'd have to shovel that off and spread it in the field. The March sun and that mussel mud - you'd be as black as the devil. Many's the day I hauled mussel mud from Orwell to way up Vernon River there with a team of horses. You 'd put that on a field and you'd have a good piece of land. I can pick out every piece of land on this place that I put mud on.... They're still pretty good. The [oyster] shells is very, very high in lime content and it don't give it off all at once. You plough them fields, you'd find these shells, parts of these shells. They're still giving off every year. Now they put on the powdered lime. Of course that's quick but I guarantee it won't stay. This digging mud dirtied the water and made a mess, so we usually left that [until] smelt fishing stopped... about the middle of February.... We had a lot of lumber and I didn't really bother with the smelt fishing, but I've worked at it. There'd be, on this river, eight, nine nets. And as many on the other river... . I've seen Angus William [Docherty] going to Montague, driving with wood-sleigh boxes full of them. Three and four cents a pound. Edward Gillis 121