October 4.
Minott was telling me to-day that he used to know a man in Lincoln who had no floor to his barn, but waited till the ground froze, then swept it clean in his barn and threshed his grain on it.
He also used to see men threshing their buckwheat in the field where it grew, having just taken off the surface down to a hard pan.
Minott used the word "gavel" to describe a parcel of stalks cast on the ground to dry.
His are good old English words, and I am always sure to find them in the dictionary, though I never heard them before in my life.
I was admiring his corn-stalks disposed about the barn to dry, over or astride the braces and the timbers, of such a fresh, clean, and handsome green, retaining their strength and nutritive properties so, unlike the gross and careless husbandry of speculating, money making farmers, who suffer their stalks to remain out till they are dry and dingy and black as chips.
Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know.
He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it.
He makes the most of his labor, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it.
He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him.
He has not too much land to trouble him, - too much work to do, no hired man nor boy, - but simply to amuse himself and live.
He cares not so much to raise a large crop as to do his work well.
He knows every pin and nail in his barn.
If another linter is be floored, he lets no hired man rob him of that amusement, but he goes slowly to the woods and, at his leisure, selects a pitch pine tree, cuts it, and hauls it or gets it hauled to the mill; and so he knows the history of his barn floor.
Farming is an amusement which has lasted him longer than gunning or fishing.
He is never in a hurry to get his garden planted and yet [it] is always planted soon enough, and none in the town is kept so beautifully clean.
He always prophesies a failure of the crops, and yet is satisfied with what he gets.
His barn floor is fastened down with oak pins, and he prefers them to iron spikes, which he says will rust and give way.
He handles and amuses himself with every ear of his corn crop as much as a child with its playthings, and so his small crop goes a great way.
He might well cry if it were carried to market.
The seed of weeds is no longer in his soil.
He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.
He keeps a cat in his barn to catch the mice.
He indulges in no luxury of food or dress or furniture, yet he is not penurious but merely simple.
If his sister dies before him, he may have to go to the almshouse in his old age; yet he is not or, for he does not want riches.
He gets out of each manipulation in the farmers' operations a fund of entertainment which the speculating drudge hardly knows.
With never-failing rheumatism and trembling hands, he seems yet to enjoy perennial health.
Though he never reads a book, — since he has finished the "Naval Monument," he speaks the best of English.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 4, 1851
He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines. See December 18, 1858 ("Minott tells how he used to love to walk through swamps where great white pines grew and hear the wind sough in their tops.");November 12, 1851 ("Minott has a story for every woodland path. He has hunted in them all. Where we walked last, he had once caught a partridge by the wing!"); February 29, 1856 ("I willingly listen to the stories he has told me half a dozen times already.“); October 2, 1857 ("The chief incidents in Minott's life must be more distinct and interesting to him now than immediately after they occurred, for he has recalled and related them so often that they are stereotyped in his mind. Never having travelled far from his hillside, he does not suspect himself, but tells his stories with fidelity and gusto to the minutest details."); August 16, 1858 ("He tells me some of his hunting stories again") See also October 12, 1851 ("Minott shells all his corn by hand. He has got a boxful ready for the mill. He will not winnow it, for he says the chaff (? ) makes it lie loose and dry faster."); March 5, 1854 ("Channing, talking with Minott the other day about his health, said, " I suppose you 'd like to die now." "No," said Minott, "I 've toughed it through the winter, and I want to stay and hear the bluebirds once more.""); March 23, 1854 ("Minott confesses to me to-day that he has not been to Boston since the last war, or 1815. Aunt said that he had not been ten miles from home since; that he has not been to Acton since Miss Powers lived there; but he declared that he had been there to cornwallis and musters. When I asked if he would like to go to Boston, he answered he was going to another Boston") November 11, 1854 ("Minott heard geese go over night before last, about 8 P. M. "); November 14, 1855 ("Minott hears geese to-day."); September 2, 1856 ("Minott, whose mind runs on them [pigeons] so much, but whose age and infirmities confine him to his wood-shed on the hillside, saw a small flock a fortnight ago.. . . One man's mind running on pigeons, will sit thus in the midst of a village, many of whose inhabitants never see nor dream of a pigeon except in the pot, and where even naturalists do not observe, and he, looking out with expectation and faith from morning till night, will surely see them."); January 8, 1857 (" Miss Minott tells me that she does not think her brother George has ever been to Boston more than once. . . and certainly not since 1812 . . . Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism. Does nothing whatever in the house but read the newspapers and few old books they have, the Almanac especially, and hold the cats, and very little indeed out of the house. Is just able to saw and split the wood"); February 20, 1857 ("Minott always sits in the corner behind the door, close to the stove, with commonly the cat by his side, often in his lap. Often he sits with his hat on"); July 3, 1857 ("Minott was sitting in his shed as usual, while his handsome pullets were perched on the wood within two feet of him, the rain having driven them to this shelter.”); September 30, 1857 ("Talked with Minott, who was sitting, as usual, in his wood-shed. His hen and chickens, finding it cold these nights on the trees behind the house, had begun last night to roost in the shed, and one by one walked or hopped up a ladder within a foot of his shoulder to the loft above . . . Minott says he is seventy-five years old."); January 28, 1858 ("Minott has a sharp ear for the note of any migrating bird."); January 28, 1858 (""He thought that the back of the winter was broken, — if it had any this year, — but he feared such a winter would kill him too."); .August 16, 1858 ("[Minott] used to love to hear the goldfinches sing on the hemp which grew near his gate."); August 16, 1858 ("Talked with Minott, who sits in his wood-shed, having, as I notice, several seats there for visitors, —one a block on the sawhorse, another a patchwork mat on a wheelbarrow, etc., etc."); August 16, 1858 ("His half-grown chickens, which roost overhead, perch on his shoulder or knee."); October 2, 1858 ("Minott told me yesterday that he had never seen the seashore but once, and that was Noddle’s Island in the War of 1812"); November 23, 1860 ("Minott tells me that sixty years ago wood was only two or three dollars a cord here – and some of that hickory.")
