A Croft in the Hills Read Online Free PDF

express. It means that our
hills and moors are again fit places for new life, for song and work and laughter, all the things we cling to so passionately, in the name of living. Each year, the rising of the larks has meant a
little more to us, as we emerge from one more winter to greet the new season.
    After the larks come the peewits. They usually arrive at dusk, and far into the darkening we hear their wild crying. Next morning we go out eagerly to watch them flashing and swooping over the
bare, brown fields. Each day after that we listen for the curlews and, when we see them gliding over the moor in the evening light and catch the sound of their call, which seems to come from some
other very far-off place, we know that spring is really with us.
    By mid-March the upper field in front of the house was ready for ploughing. It was to be sown to oats. The bigger field, below the house, was to carry a crop of oats, undersown with grass, and
we were to grow two acres of turnips and half an acre of potatoes. Later on we would put more under grass. We were to work on a five-year rotation.
    On this still March morning we could feel the warmth of the sun on our hands and faces. Not only to see the sun, but to feel its warmth, that was what gave a lift to the day! Jim hitched the
plough to the tractor and began slowly turning over the sward. I stood watching the work from the door and as soon as the household chores were finished I went out to dig the garden. Helen
scampered between field and garden, calling encouragement to each of us. It was a morning none of us will forget.
    Of course, winter had not finished with us. The very next day, the wind shifted unaccountably to the east and sleet began to fall. Jim finished ploughing the top field, completely unperturbed by
the weather, and in the afternoon he made a start at the lower field. We knew that there were patches of bog here and though we had scythed the rushes and given the drain a preliminary clearing the
ground was still treacherous. As dusk was falling the tractor stuck and no amount of manoeuvring would get her clear. We went along to our nearest tractor-owning neighbour, who came willingly to
the rescue. It was then that we got our first inkling of what good-neighbourliness can mean in lonely places. Since that day, we have borrowed and lent everything from a loaf of bread to a broody
hen and have exchanged services of every kind, from a hand at the dipping to the rescue of a snow-bound truck. We are all faced with the same fundamental problems and we have learnt how utterly
dependent we are upon one another in dealing with them.

CHAPTER IV
    CUCKOO-SNOW
    W E were soon well in the grip of spring fever. In the lengthening evenings we would take a pleasure stroll round the fields after supper, for to stay
indoors had become positively irksome. We acquired our first stock—a dozen laying hens, which we bought from a neighbour. We settled them in the stable, in a litter of peat-moss and straw,
and began to keep a tally of eggs laid.
    About this time it came to our ears that the croft immediately to our east was likely to come up for sale. The man who had bought it, a few years previously, was trying to run it in the time he
could spare from another full-time job and it had become a burden to him. There were about fifteen acres of well-fenced arable ground, some more rough grazing, and the croft carried the right to
graze sheep on the open hill on the other side of the road, a right shared by four other places in the neighbourhood. There was an excellent steading, with a brand-new corrugated iron roof, and a
small wooden bungalow adjoining it, in place of the ruined dwelling house.
    We were tempted to acquire this place as it would give a reasonably good access road to our land. Our own very indifferent road came through part of this holding and in the past, we learned,
there had been a certain amount of dispute about rights of way and the upkeep of communal