30 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



little field added to those first started succeeded in 

 almost direct proportion to the amount of manure 

 used and the thoroughness of the underdrainage. 



The next winter 300 lambs were fed, then 350, then 

 350 again, and then a larger barn was built and 700 

 were fed. The work grew easier and easier; wheat 

 was dropped from the rotation, and no more timothy 

 seed was sown. Lamb feeding promised profit, so 

 finally it was resolved that lambs would be fed and 

 crops grown that lambs liked, and nothing else. 

 Meanwhile Willis and the writer bent their backs 

 energetically in the ditches, draining more and more 

 land, and hiring men to dig what they could not. 

 Charlie, too, growing up a stalwart boy, helped 

 cheerfully, and the three brothers were full of faith. 

 And yet neighbors smiled, and some there were to 

 sneer. It is true that when the new barn was built 

 with a mow that could hold 100 tons of hay men 

 asked smilingly if we thought we could borrow 

 money enough to buy hay enough to fill it, and went 

 off laughing when we declared that we would fill it 

 from our own alfalfa meadows some day. No one 

 else in the country was trying to grow alfalfa, so 

 far as we knew, no one else in Ohio, though there 

 was some grown in Onondaga Co., New York. Well, 

 we filled the barn at last, and had an overflow. We 

 fed a thousand lambs as we had dreamed, and we 

 fed 1,200. We had learned how at last. Lamb feed- 

 ing is an art, a science ; it is not yet all learned. 



It had not all been smooth sailing, this lamb feed- 

 ing. More than one disaster had overtaken us. 



