THE SUNKEN GARDEN 301 



and harvest and the correct succession of garden 

 crops. She and Johnson planned a greenhouse, 

 which Nelson built, for flowers and green stuff 

 through the winter, she said ; but I think it is 

 chiefly a place where she can play in the dirt 

 when the weather is bad. Anyhow, that glass 

 house cost the farm $442, and the interest and 

 taxes are going on yet. I as well as Polly had 

 to do some building that autumn. Three more 

 chicken-houses were built, making five in all. 

 Each consists in ten compartments twenty feet 

 wide, of which each is intended to house forty 

 hens. When these houses were completed, I had 

 room for forty pens of forty each, which was 

 my limit for laying hens. In addition was one 

 house of ten pens for half-grown chickens and 

 fattening fowls. It would take the hatch of 

 another year to fill my pens, but one must pro- 

 vide for the future. These three houses cost, in 

 round numbers, $2100, five times as much as 

 Polly's glass house, but I was not going to 

 play in them. 



I also built a cow-house on the same plan as 

 the first one, but about half the size. This was 

 for the dry cows and the heifers. It cost $2230, 

 and gave me stable room enough for the waiting 

 stock, so that I could count on forty milch cows 

 all the time, when my herd was once balanced. 

 Forty cows giving milk, six hundred swine of all 

 ages, putting on fat or doing whatever other 

 duty came to hand, fifteen or sixteen hundred 



