Faribault -July 6-1903
Dear Lucy,
I must write you before any more time ________. I have had so much work to do since you last wrote that my letters have been neglected. I wish sometimes I did not live on a farm. I dont feel near as strong as I used to and it is much harder for me to work now. I miss Alice. May has had to make _____ the butter now. I have been canning what small fruit I could. I have some beautiful currant jelly. I wish you had some too. Today I am going to make some white currant jelly. This week I will have to can raspberries. We will have some blackberries, a few apples. Crops are looking well now. They came near being injured by drouth. We had heavy rains through May and then there was four weeks without any rain. The crops on ground, where it could not be cultivated, suffered some. We have had fine showers the past week. Lots of hay was spoilt. _______ folks had about 10 ton ready to stack. If it had been in Cal., it would'nt have been spoilt, would it. They are plowing up the clover now and putting sowed corn in. They have a corn harvester to cut it with in the fall. How are crops and fruit with you? Apricts and cherries are in market here, no peaches yet. Alice wrote me that she had been canning dewberries & thicket plums. She writes I would never want to eat the wild plum here if I could get those. They have the Japanese plum too. She said peaches would soon be ripe. Do you have as many flowers as ever? I have had the loveliest pansies this summer. The plants lived over winter. Every where we had flowers last summer. The seeds dropped and the plants have come up and now I have so many flowers. Did you ever see any Cantebury Bells? They are beautiful. Some live over winter and bloom the next summer. I have one that was planted from the seed last summer. It was a sight. One mass of bloom. Every one that saw it admired it. The rest we set out, bloomed last summer. They were annuals. One was of the cup & succer kind. I have some fine house plants. My two large fuschia fill the two east windows, all in bloom. The sultana impatiens is over two feet high, fills amother window and is covered with blossoms the whole time. There is a large Palm up stairs. The chamer has no ocupant now. Clarence will use it next winter. He now ocupies one of Orvilles chamber. I expect you will have a nice place of your acre. You will enjoy fixing it up with the feeling that it is to be your home. It would have been a big misfortune had you lost you cow. We came near loosing one on the old place. Father worked oveer her as you told of doing. Of course it would'ent have been so serious a matter to us for we then had 6 cows. John & Mary lost their first cow in the same way. Since they have been in Dakota, they have lost two horses. Mary thinks it is rather up hill buisness getting along in Dakota, but John keeps a stiff uper lip and dont seem to get discouraged. If he does, you dont know it. We are all well but tired of so much work. So much rain has made work behind. Father has some bees now. They are making lots of honey this season. There is any quantity of white clover for them to work on. Did you get a book I sent out last spring? "Shrouds with Pockets" Did you hear Mr ______________?
Love to you & all the rest of the family.