A CIDERLESS FARM 63- 



In Wayside was the office, where I conferred with farm help 

 and kept dairy and expense books. The veranda afterward added 

 proved a wise expenditure and was well patronized. 



Housing Farm Help. 



The lounging and sleeping quarters of the help were also in* 

 Wayside, and here they had their meals when the force was large, 

 a man cook being employed. 



An ante-room was turned into a semi-sitting room. In it were 

 a fireplace, lounge and easy chairs, a large table, well covered with 

 agricultural and other papers, and hanging shelves filled with a small 

 but instructive farm library. 



Farm Scrap Book. 



There were scrap-books regularly indexed, each devoted to a dif- 

 ferent topic animals, crops, utensils, farm economies, and the like, 

 for which some of the help were interested in collecting items. On 

 the walls hung pictures of animals, prize vegetables, etc. 



Above this sitting-room were bedrooms, reached both from with- 

 out and within. 



A Ciderless Farm. 



An orgy caused by the use of hard cider decided me to "mother" 

 the cider into vinegar, sell the cider-press, and thereafter feed the 

 surplus apples to the pigs or give them away with the understanding 

 that they were not to be used for cider. Vinegar making, before the 

 German twenty-four hour process was discovered, we found a long 

 story. After the half filled barrels were given a bit of "mother" 

 (which it took two years to mature) it was another year before vine- 

 gar spelled cash. 



Wayside annex contained a thoroughly warmed tool shop 

 fitted with carpenter's bench, anvil, forge, lathe, etc., and sometimes 

 after an absence of months borrowed tools came back because they 

 were ndelibly marked "Hillcrest Farm" on metal and wood. Oil 

 kept them from rusting when not in use. 



The Tree House. 



Close by Wayside grew the tall chestnut in whose spreading 

 top for a dozen years, straddling its highest crotch and defying the 

 wildest storms, clung the tree house of the same youngster who 

 planned and built The Cot. 



The Back Lane. 



Yes, one edged our farm. It had an individuality of its own. 

 For years the neighbors had called it "Break Neck," "Sheep," 

 or "Hog Hill," the usual names for a back country hill. Nar- 

 rower than the highway, the tree tops sometimes came together 

 and skill was needed by the passer-by to avoid cat-briers and 

 blackberry vines that hedged it. Here the real freedom of 



