By this time I had learned to run the breaking plough. Most of these
ploughs were very large, turning furrows from eighteen inches to two
feet wide, and were drawn by four or five yoke of oxen. They were used
only for the first ploughing, in breaking up the wild sod woven into a
tough mass, chiefly by the cordlike roots of perennial grasses,
reinforced by the tap-roots of oak and hickory bushes, called "grubs,"
some of which were more than a century old and four or five inches in
diameter. In the hardest ploughing on the most difficult ground, the
grubs were said to be as thick as the hair on a dog's back. If in good
trim, the plough cut through and turned over these grubs as if the
century-old wood were soft like the flesh of carrots and turnips; but
if not in good trim the grubs promptly tossed the plough out of the
ground. A stout Highland Scot, our neighbor, whose plough was in bad
order and who did not know how to trim it, was vainly trying to keep
it in the ground by main strength, while his son, who was driving and
merrily whipping up the cattle, would cry encouragingly, "Haud her in,
fayther! Haud her in!"
"But hoo i' the deil can I haud her in when she'll no _stop_ in?" his
perspiring father would reply, gasping for breath between each word.
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