This would indicate that spring was fairly well-advanced, and that midsummer might be figured on as coming in January.

It was now the end of November.

Warm weather probably would last until February or March.

Possibly they would be too late with their planting, but they went about it speedily, determinedly, just the same.
All of them had had crop failures before.

All of them had seen the labour of months go for naught in the blight of an evening's frost, or the sweep of a prairie fire.