The sun comes over the top of the hill

Shines on the fields I've got to till

My bones are weary, but I know I will

And not just because you ask it

Rake and hoe are hung on nails

Hay piled up in tidy bales

Milk lies sweet in a hundred pails

And apples in the basket

Chorus:

Rite-fol-de-diddle-o, rite-fol-de-day

Rite-fol-de-diddle-o, rite-fol-de-day

Rite-fol-de-diddle-o, rite-fol-de-day

There's apples in the basket

A house that's tight to the wind and snow

A barn that's full of what we grow

Empty purse, but I don't owe

A thing to any man living

A woman warm, a woman kind

A woman that knows her own sweet mind

A woman that knows just what's behind

The sins that she's forgiven

Chorus

There's branches on the family tree

A boy, a girl and the baby's three

They look like her, they look like me

Like folks that's dead and gone now

But I don't care, we're all the same

None to bless and none to blame

Doing in our Father's name

The work we carry on now

Chorus

The old white goose is on the wing

But he'll come back again in spring

Each year we do the same old thing

And the same old wheel goes spinning

When the air is warm and the earth is sweet

And the Lord's clean dirt is on our feet

The circle comes around complete

The end is the beginning

Chorus