Dear James,
I am waiting for the children to come home with the milk so will write to you. We looked for a letter from you but none came. It has been cool the last three days but no more rain after that thunder shower. The oats are pretty dry and don’t seem to grow any. The garden stuff is all right except the peas are beginning to dry up. There are pods 2 inches long on the early ones and a nice rain would save them. I hoed the onions, carrots, cabbage and pop corn yesterday. That is 4 inches high.
The Nevis creamery had their annual picnic Wed. We needed, butter and meat and the children wanted to go so we packed a lunch and went to it. The tires were getting soft and the pump is broken so I stopped at the garage there and had the man there put in a new inner tube in the left rear tire as you know there was something wrong with the valve. He also pumped up the rest of the tires. We drove along the lake shore aways and finally came to the end of the road at a cottage by the lake. We turned around and went back the same way and met a nice herd of Guernseys being driven in by a woman, and an empty hay-rack with a couple of young men in charge. The road was soft and narrow and I didn’t care to turn out and the cows acted scared of the car so I just stopped it and turned off the engine and the Lady and boys drove the cows by on both sides. The cows acted as tho’ they had never seen a car before and tried to climb the bank on both sides of the road. There was room for the hay-rack to pass us without our turning out as the ditch wasn’t deep so we went merrily on our way home. The children wanted to go in bathing and there is a nice pool by the bridge near Bryan Sell’s so we drove over there and left the car in their yard and their two children went out with us and we had a nice time. We stayed there about 30 minutes and went back to Sells and lo and behold we had a flat tire, the one I had just had the new tube put into. Then we remembered that the car had sounded funny just before we got there and when we got the tire off, the tube was completely ruined. I’ve saved it for you to look at, it looks as tho’ it had been pinched when it was put in. There was no sign of a puncture. Well, we got the old tube and changed the valve so we could pump it up and put that in the tire when I came to get the pump it was gone and so were our pliers. Sell’s pump was no good and we could get only a little air in the tire but we got home without any damage being done and I jacked up that wheel and left it that way. We checked over your tools and could find nothing else missing but the pump and pliers. I was in the car all the while it was in the garage and we know we had the pump in the trunk and the pliers too as I put them there myself. Maybe you can read between the lines. Maybe you can pick up a pump down there and bring it with you.
We heard County Agent Olson speak at the picnic. He spoke on feeding cows and explained a plan whereby farmers could get a thorough-bred calf and keep it for three years and have the use of it to improve their herds just for feeding the animal and paying registration costs.
Well I must close now. I hope you are well and we surely are looking forward to July 1st. Lots of love from us all,
Martha and the children