It was to my great joy that I found, at last, two shepherds at the Royal Agricultural Show in England who fed mangel-würzels to their sheep. They gave me planting information and argued between themselves, to my edification and education, about the relative merits of each type. This morning’s mail brought me a fall catalog from Smith and Hawkin. I’d bought a pair of barn shoes from them once but nothing else; they are a bit too precious for this farm. The covers are too pretty, however, for me to tell them to stop sending the catalog. As I looked through it, hopefully, finding nothing to covet, suddenly there it was. The barn thermometer of my wildest dreams! With a picture from a French seed packet of a smiling Gallic farmer, red cheeked, stout, holding a formidable mangel under each arm. The Mammoth Red under the right and a Golden Tankard under the left. I want that thermometer. And I want those seeds. Having tracked them down across this continent and the adjacent ocean, the mangels have come to me.
