six or eight miles of my place, at
about $1.50 each, and they would have grown into fat profit by fall; but
I would not take a risk that might bear ill fruit. I had slight
depressions of spirits when I visited my piggery during that summer; but
I chirked up a little in the fall, when the brood sows again made good.
But more of that anon.

CHAPTER XXVII

WORK ON THE HOME FORTY

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 fi