184 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY 



able tree may be valuable as a windbreak or as shade for 

 your house. The wrong tree for shade is the dense foliaged, 

 low-branched tree which forms a solid dome from the ground 

 up. The right tree, in the opinion of Henry Hicks (in Country 

 Life in America), is the American elm, which ought to be 

 called the umbrella tree. Pliny speaks of the plane tree, 

 our sycamore or buttonwood, as excellent, because of the 

 horizontal branches which, like window blinds, allow free 

 passage of the breezes while intercepting the heat of the sun. 



The ideal shade tree is a canopy like a parasol over the 

 house, with high, leafy branches that do not shut off light 

 and air from the windows. This cools a house by keeping 

 the sun off and cools the air by the rapid evaporation from its 

 leaves, and will make it ten to fifteen degrees cooler in sum- 

 mer. It will be cheaper and more effective than a com- 

 bination of awnings, piazza, and eaves. Woodman, spare 

 that tree. 



Stumps may be burned out To get a good draught, 

 bore a hole in a slanting direction far down among the roots. 

 The smoke goes through the hole first and then the flame, 

 boring the body to the roots deep enough to plow. Land 

 can also be cleared by dynamite. We condense from Edith 

 Loring Fullerton in Farming on what has been done. 



To go into the desolate, uncultivated, burned over " waste 

 lands" near a great city and put ten acres under cultivation 

 in the shortest possible space of time was our problem. We 

 undertook it at short notice in an uncertain season the 

 autumn with the determination to get at least a portion 

 of the land seeded down to winter rye before cold weather 

 prohibited further work. 



United to this problem was that of working a small farm 

 to its utmost capacity rather than half cultivation of a 



