cams_WROlden_b011_f010_018_001

San Antonio Monterey Ca
Piojo May 14 1864

My Dearest Sister,

I have been long intending
to reply to your kind letters, but there is so much
to look after on a new place 19 miles in circumference,
every thing to be done for the first time,
to give you an idea since December we have enclosed
one field of our eighty acres and another
the Garden, of six, have ploughed & sown near fifty
acres, including the garden and owing to the lack
of rain this season the ground being dry at the
time the work was very hard, and the clods
had to be pulverized by wearing them out with
the roller & harrow, I could have ploughed double
the quantity with the same force if the usual
amt of rain had fallen, but the work had to
be done and the grain sown in time for the
spring rains, which however this year have not
come in sufficient amt to do much good. We
have had since this date last year but 3 1/2 inches
of rain, in any other country the grass and trees would
die, but the trees do not seem to mind it at all
and the grass although short & thin still grows -
but thousands upon thousands of cattle will starve
to death this year, this year is unexampled, last