The Sojourner by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The May sun forced the wet earth to give up its moisture. The soil steamed. Ase stood in the sparse shade of the new-leafed poplars before his house and looked out across his land. The blue mist rising in the valleys seemed more like smoke. It swirled and eddied, spiraled and lifted, and almost as he watched, was absorbed into the pale gold light. He had finished the planting of all his fields. Spring had come early, as though to compensate for the past year's harshness. All signs had been of a continued blandness. He had fallen back on his long established but never used credit with Mr. Peyton, buying seed with abandon, since he felt certain in his bones of a fine growing season. He had planted summer wheat. The bean crop was in, the potatoes, the barley and the buckwheat. He had even risked so early a planting of corn, the oak leaves being the size of a squirrel's paws.

Easter vacation at the university had been late this year and Nat and Arent had come home and given him ten days of priceless help in turning the land, fertilizing, harrowing and laying out the rows for the planting. A little money was left from the hard winter and Eric interrupted his job to give him two weeks of time. There had been enough rain and not too much, and any day now the rich brown fields would sprout with the blessed green of growth. He took a long breath of the sweet moist air. The Lindens had come through a perilous time. There was still meat in the smokehouse, the one milch cow he had kept was fresh, Nellie's chickens and turkeys were laying heavily. The fruit trees were ending a riotous bloom. The house garden was in, nursing secretly the good vegetables and berries.