There were other autumn chores: repairing equipment and storing it for winter; picking apples to barrel the keepers in the cellar for winter’s pies; pressing cider from bruised or imperfect apples to make vinegar, hoeing out potatoes and storing them with other roots. Then it was time to fix the house for winter, to rake leaves against the foundations all around the house and to cut spruce boughs, laying them over the leaves to keep the leaves in place. When the first snow came Wesley shoveled it over leaves and spruce to tuck the house up for winter. And there was wood to cut into stove-length pieces, to split and stack in the woodshed. The sleighs and sledges were ready. Then there was Christmas, then January and cutting cordwood for another winter—entering again upon the year and the year’s work.

This life was not de Crevecoeur’s paradise. The farm produced little money, and my grandfather wore my father’s old hand-me-downs; everywhere rags of poverty flourished like skunkweed. Still, my grandparents appeared to enjoy their work, which did not extend human consciousness but occupied or absorbed it. Elsewhere there were miserable farmers who should not have been farmers, who lacked the vocation for it and never got their work done, or did it so late that it failed: Green wood burns badly; hay without nutriment makes poor milk. The old people spoke of feckless farmers not with contempt for laziness but in hushed and nervous tones as if they spoke of an illness. If work was life, working badly was a wasting disease.

Although their work was endless, I never heard my grandparents complain about it or whine. Work was there like Mt. Everest. I speak of both my grandparents, although I’ve written so far about Wesley: Kate worked as much or more than he did. I speak of him first because—as I was ten and twelve and fourteen—he was my model, my companion, my tale-teller, my poem-reciter, my source or entrance into the great cavern of old time: the Civil War, the blizzard of ’88, the Boston and Maine controlling the New Hampshire legislature. (In politics, his daily New Deal rant converted me from the businessman Republicanism of my father and my father’s father.) But as I loved him and his work, I also lived in the house of Kate’s work and affection. I dwelt summers within the little estate they made, out of love and work together.

This estate depended on women’s work. When I spoke earlier of gardening, canning, and egg-harvesting, I touched on Kate’s work—because they collaborated on these tasks—but to a large extent they ruled separate domains. He was lord of barn and outdoors, of animals and hay; she was empress of kitchen, Glenwood Range, and house, wholly in charge of food, clothing, preservation, cleanliness, and comfort. Kate was strong, stout, controlling, and tireless: Oh,

Man may work from sun to sun
But woman’s work is never done.