1950s Archive

The Snow Farm

Originally Published August 1955

Aunt Celicia, I'll be bound!

What brings you up now from the ground?

Ah, you wear your lace mills, so

It's a-berrying you would go!

Sakes! you know I can't lie still

When the blueberries blue the hill,

Never could, and never will!

There are hands enough to pick the berries,

There's a Snow by every hardback's steeple!

Woodchucks gone to the bottom of his burrow,

Hound-Dogs here, the hill's alive with people.

Land o' Goshen! August, let me

Pick my blueberries. You can set me

liven where mosquitoes get me!

Don't you tear your pretty black lace mitts.

Spinster Aunt has shed her skirt and sits

In her petticoat to pick the faster,

But Big Girls filled her ten-quart pail and passed her,

Middle Bloy has hung his pail around

His neck, and he is eating up the ground,

His hands are quicker than a snap bug's nipper!

Small Boy is filling his long-handled dipper.

But Mother picks circles around them all,

She's bitten on a spice bug, there is gall

In her mouth, but she keeps on the go,

Her fingers are as dark as indigo.

Grandma says her backbone has no hinges,

She's picking raspberries, slapping at the minges.

Bur Grandpa says his back has got a crick

In it, he sits back, and will not pick.

Hired Man is deep in the blackberry thicket

In pants like iron, busier than a cricket.

Yes, Celicia, there'll be jams and jellies

All Winter long in the Snow folks' bellies!

And Mother tonight will polka dot a cake

With blueberries to make the angels ache,

A plain vanilla, but with blueberries wedded,

Each berry in a coat of dry flour bedded.

So the berries will float there whole and light

And delight the eater every bite

When the cake is turned from our the pan

And goes smoking hot into a man.

Berries and women

Gather the sun

When it's a dwindling

Dying one.

Women and berries,

When the winds blow,

Keep the house warm

Under the snow.

When Winter and age

Whiten the air,

Berries and women

Keep Summer there.

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