Free Blossoms on the Roof by Rebecca Martin Page B

well.”
    Polly begged, “Tell us the story please.”
    Father told how Jesus sat down near a well one day. He was tired and thirsty, and His disciples went to town to buy food. When a Samaritan woman came along, Jesus asked her to draw water from the well for Him.
    â€œHow surprised the woman was! You see Jesus was a Jew, and the Jews had very little to do with the Samaritans. Infact, they even looked down on them. To think that a Jewish man would ask a Samaritan woman to draw water for him was almost unthinkable!
    â€œThen Jesus told her something wonderful and mysterious.” Father went on to say, “Jesus offered to give the woman the living water of everlasting life!
    â€œSo now,” Father concluded, “when we drink water from our well, we can sometimes remember the blessing of everlasting life that Jesus promised.”
    The meal was over, and the oxen must have felt much better because all it took was one word from Father, and they were off!

14
    Firebreak  
    T he warm wind kept blowing, and Father kept on plowing and harrowing. Finally near the end of May, Father said, “It is time to plant the flax.”
    Ben jumped up happily. “If you’ve finished plowing, does that mean we can have Jasper and Rob back?”
    Father shook his head. “Sorry, not yet. As soon as the seed is in the ground, I will go on plowing. We want to get even more land ready for next year, you know.”
    â€œOh. So it’ll be a while before we have time to go fishing.” The disappointment showed in Ben’s voice.
    â€œOnce the planting is done, we will make time,” Father answered cheerfully. “Now, in which packing box will I find our seeds? Do you know, Polly?”
    Polly pointed to a box. “We brought the flax seeds in the same box as the garden seeds.”
    Father opened the seed bag. He lifted a handful of shiny brown seeds and let them drop down through his fingers.
    â€œWhat are we going to do with so many acres of flax?” Ben asked.
    Father replied, “We will sell the seeds. And we might use some of the stalks to weave linen and make new clothes.”
    â€œPolly and I both need a new dress,” said Mother. “Father and Ben need new shirts. We brought spun wool from the sheep we had in Indiana so we could make some linsey-woolsey fabric.”
    â€œSo that’s what linsey-woolsey means,” Polly said, chuckling. “Cloth that’s made partly from sheep and partly from flax.”
    Polly walked out to the field with Father, who had the flax seeds in a bag at his side. When he was ready to sow the seeds, he took a handful, swung his arm, and let the seeds fly out in a rainbow shape. Over and over he did this while walking across the black, crumbly soil.
    Then Polly noticed something strange. All the way around the edge of the field stretched a plowed strip of land that was not harrowed. Father did not plant any seeds in that strip. “Why don’t you plant here, Father?” Polly asked.
    Father stopped planting and looked at Polly. “That plowed strip is our firebreak.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œWell, sometimes when the prairie is dry, big fires canstart up, and miles and miles of grass get burned up. We wouldn’t want such a fire to burn our house, would we?”
    â€œOh, no,” said Polly with a shudder.
    â€œSo that’s why we leave a bare, plowed strip. Because a fire cannot easily jump across that strip, it would likely stop a fire from getting too close to us.” Father reached into his bag for another handful of seeds. On he moved across the field.
    Polly stood stock-still. Miles and miles of fire! How terrible that would be to see the whole prairie on fire.
    She ran after Father and asked, “If everything was wet, we wouldn’t get a prairie fire, would we?”
    â€œNo. Rain is just what we need—for two reasons. Rain would discourage prairie fires, and it would