86 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



keep turning the edge of the bank down when 

 I plow, pretty soon we'll have it smoothed off. 

 In a few years you'll have three extra acres 

 of the best land on the farm on that bottom, 

 instead of a piece of swamp." 



We have those three extra acres planted to 

 corn this year. Last year we made a bumper 

 crop of millet on them. They're rich as cream 

 they are the cream skimmed off the higher 

 lands by the beating rains. The added value 

 of those three acres and of the crops we've 

 taken from them has just about repaid the cost 

 of all the rock-hauling Sam has done in the 

 five years of his service. 



We planned things in that first winter that 

 must take another five years to accomplish. 

 If we ever get to a point where there's no new 

 conquest to be undertaken, I think Sam will 

 quit me. There lies his genius. His grin 

 would fade forever and he'd settle into con- 

 firmed melancholy if he had to work on the 

 place after it's all smoothed out. 



When the early spring came, I bought plows 

 to match my man's disposition; and for the 

 first time since the Year One these fields had 

 a real breaking. The tenant farmers had been 

 only fooling with plowing, drawing trifling 



