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stink of manure. I could hear the cow’s belly sounds with my head against her flank, and it was all warm and comforting. As I fumbled for her teats, I found it hard to stay awake. The ping-squish of the milk hitting the pail brought bleats from the chorus of cats badgering for milk. From the next stable came the thump of horse hooves and the odd soft nutter. Neck chains rattled as The Old Man flopped open the laps in the barn floor wall. Rectangles of light showed at the heads of the cows and there was the swish of hay-supplement for a waning pasture and munches in the mangers.
    Milking didn’t take long; the cows had next year’s calves growing in their bellies and except for the farr cow, we were weaning them dry. The crooked-backed cream separator in the porch, with its large bowl, bucket seats, spouts and crank gave its angry whirr only briefly; only a small blurp of cream for the can cooling in the cellar hole, barely a token of skim milk for the calf tub in the small pasture by the house.
    It was warm by then, in the kitchen. The cold, morbid smells had been driven out by the hot stove, its lights dancing out cheer through its several cracks. Instead, there were the toasty smells of burning maple, cooked oatmeal and tea. The snap and burr of the fire wove their way through the whoot of the kettle boiling out steam and the strains of an old-time fiddle and guitar twang from the radio. There was pause after breakfast, for The Old Man to lean back in his chair and smoke his pregnant cigarette and catch the news and weather. After Nanny washed the dishes, in a large pan on the stove, she kneaded dough on the table, stuffed knife-cut globs into pans, slid them into the oven, filled the stove with wood and set the draft.
    First light was beginning to creep in by the time we got the horses hitched to the sloven and picked up Nanny at the pathway to the house. The rattle of the sloven wheels, the foot clumps of the horses and the tinkles of trace chains resounded eerily as we rode to the field. I moved to the pile of empty bags at the back of the sloven before we turned in at the headland. The cold, choky dust from the bags puffed into my face as I threw them at intervals while we drove the length of the field by the potato drills. When we hitched the horses to the digger, you could begin to see the tops on the rows. When The Boss swung the horses into the outside row, their feet muddling in cross-step, you could see small steam puffs coming from their nostrils. After, The Boss halted the horses at the row’s end, waited for me to lever down the digger’s shear, then drove on. You could see the side whirl of the clawing digger’s wheel and the spew of clay and potatoes hitting the side-slung canvas boom with a carrumph .
    It was close to midday when we finished the row. The red truck had not moved, but the two men had set up down the road a ways. Nanny lumbered to the house to start dinner. The Old Man and I turned to the horses, which stood hitched to the digger, lazily swishing their tails, and changed them to the sloven. We ran along the row of filled bags then, the horses stopping on command, The Old Man knee-boosting the bags onto the sloven, me taking and dragging them to some kind of pile against the axle box.
    At the headland by the road, loaded now, we drove to the corner of the field by the end of the lane and stopped. I jumped off and went for the mail. As I was returning, the red truck passed; the sun glinted on the driver’s glasses and deepened his partner in shade. The driver gave a formal wave. The Old Man waved back and we were engulfed in the dust trail of the truck. The Old Man winced his shoulder at the dust and turned the horses toward home.
    There was a pensive look on his face I had rarely seen before as we rode down the lane, the wheel jolts flapping the mouths of the bags we sat among, sending minute puffs of choky dust into our faces. When he pulled up beside the house, he