Part 11 (2/2)

April and May made amends for the rudeness of March, and the ploughs were early afield. Thompson, Zeb, Johnson, and sometimes Anderson, followed the furrows, first in 10 and 11, and lastly in 13. Number 9 had a fair clover sod, and was not disturbed. We ploughed in all about 114 acres, but we did not subsoil. We spent twenty days ploughing and as many more in fitting the ground for seed. The weather was unusually warm for the season, and there was plenty of rain. By the middle of May, oats were showing green in Nos. 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13,--sixty-two acres. The corn was well planted in 15 and the west three-quarters of 14,--eighty-two acres. The other ten acres in the young orchard was planted to fodder corn, sown in drills so that it could be cultivated in one direction.

The ten-acre orchard on the south side of the home lot was used for potatoes, sugar beets, cabbages, turnips, etc., to furnish a winter supply of vegetables for the stock.

The outlook for alfalfa was not bright. In the early spring we fertilized it again, using five hundred pounds to the acre, though it seemed like a conspicuous waste. The warm rains and days of April and May brought a fine crop of weeds; and about the middle of May I turned Anderson loose in the fields with a scythe, and he mowed down everything in sight.

After that things soon began to look better in the alfalfa fields. As the season was favorable, we were able to cut a crop of over a ton to the acre early in July, and nearly as much in the latter part of August.

We cut forty tons from these twenty acres within a year from seeding, but I suspect that was unusual luck. I had used thirteen hundred pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre, and the season was very favorable for the growth of the plant. I have since cut these fields three times each year, with an average yield of five tons to the acre for the whole crop.

I like alfalfa, both as green and as dry forage. When we use it green, we let it lie in swath for twenty-four hours, that it may wilt thoroughly before feeding. It is then fit food for hens, hogs, and, in limited quant.i.ties, for cows, and is much relished. When used dry, it is always cut fine and mixed with ground grains. In this shape it is fed liberally to hens and hogs, and also to milch cows; for the latter it forms half of the cut-food ration.

While the crops are growing, we will find time to note the changes on the home lot. Nearly in front of the farm-house, and fifty yards distant, was a s.p.a.ce well fitted for the kitchen garden. We marked off a plat two hundred feet by three hundred, about one and a half acres, carted a lot of manure on it, and ploughed it as deep as the subsoiler would reach. This was done as soon as the frost permitted. We expected this garden to supply vegetables and small fruits for the whole colony at Four Oaks. An acre and a half can be made exceedingly productive if properly managed.

Along the sides of this garden we planted two rows of currant and gooseberry bushes, six feet between rows, and the plants four feet apart in the rows. The ends of the plat were left open for convenience in horse cultivation. Ten feet outside these rows of bush fruit was planted a line of quince trees, thirty on each side, and twenty feet beyond these a row of cherry trees, twenty in each row.

Near the west boundary of the home lot, and north of the lane that enters it, I planted two acres of dwarf pear trees--Bartlett and d.u.c.h.ess,--three hundred trees to the acre. I also planted six hundred plum trees--Abundance, Wickson, and Gold--in the chicken runs on lot 4.

After May 1, when he was relieved from his farm duties, Johnson had charge of the planting and also of the gardening, and he took up his special work with energy and pleasure.

The drives on the home lot were slightly rounded with ploughs and sc.r.a.per, and then covered with gravel. The open slope intended for the lawn was now to be treated. It comprised about ten acres, irregular in form and surface, and would require a good deal of work to whip it into shape. A lawn need not be perfectly graded,--in fact, natural inequalities with dips and rises are much more attractive; but we had to take out the asperities. We ploughed it thoroughly, removed all stumps and stones, levelled and sloped it as much as pleased Polly, harrowed it twice a week until late August, sowed it heavily to gra.s.s seed, rolled it, and left it.

Polly had the house in her mind's eye. She held repeated conversations with Nelson, and was as full of plans and secrets as she could hold. By agreement, she was to have a free hand to the extent of $15,000 for the house and the carriage barn. I never really examined the plans, though I saw the blue prints of what appeared to be a large house with a driving entrance on the east and a great wide porch along the whole south side.

I did not know until it was nearly finished how large, convenient, and comfortable it was to be. A hall, a great living-room, the dining room, a small reception room, and an office, bedroom, and bath for me, were all on the ground floor, besides a huge wing for the kitchen and other useful offices.

Above stairs there was room for the family and a goodly number of friends. We had agreed that the house should be simple in all ways, with no hard wood except floors, and no ornamentation except paint and paper.

It must be larger than our needs, for we looked forward to delightful visits from many friends. We were to have more leisure than ever before for social life, and we desired to make the most of our opportunities.

A country house is by all odds the finest place to entertain friends and to be entertained by them. They come on invitation, not as a matter of form, and they stay long enough to put by questions of weather, clothes, and servant-girls, and to get right down to good old-fas.h.i.+oned visiting.

Real heart-to-heart talks are everyday occurrences in country visits, while they are exceptional in city calls. We meant to make much of our friends at Four Oaks, and to have them make much of us. We have discovered new values even in old friends, since we began to live with them, weeks at a time, under the same roof. Their interests are ours, and our plans are warmly taken up by them. There is nothing like it among the turmoils and interruptions of town life, and the older we grow the more we need this sort of rest among our friends. The guest book at the farm will show very few weeks, in the past six years, when friends haven't been with us, and Polly and I feel that the pleasure we have received from this source ought to be placed on the credit side of the farm ledger.

Another reason for a company house was that Jack and Jane would shortly be out of school. It was not at all in accord with our plan that they should miss any pleasure by our change. Indeed, we hoped that the change would be to their liking and to their advantage.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DISCOUNTING THE MARKET

We broke ground for the house late in May, and Nelson said that we should be in it by Thanksgiving Day. Soon after the plans were settled Polly informed me that she should not spend much money on the stable.

”Can't do it,” she said, ”and do what I ought to on the house. I will give you room for six horses; the rest, if you have more, must go to the farm barn. I cannot spend more than $1100 or $1200 on the barn.”

Polly was boss of this department, and I was content to let her have her way. She had already mulcted me to the extent of $436 for trees, plants, and shrubs which were even then grouped on the lawn after a fas.h.i.+on that pleased her. I need not go into the details of the lawn planting, the flower garden, the pergola, and so forth. I have a suspicion that Polly has in mind a full account of the ”fight for the home forty,” in a form greatly better than I could give it, and it is only fair that she should tell her own story. I am not the only one who admires her landscape, her flower gardens, and her woodcraft. Many others do honor to her tastes and to the evidence of thought which the home lot shows. She disclaims great credit, for she says, ”One has only to live with a place to find out what it needs.”

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