42 Our Farming. 



The yield was not large, but they brought a large price. Those 

 from Lot 4 sold as fast as I could dig them at about $i a bushel. 

 The early ones were sold in July before the great scarcity was 

 known, and the price was consequently lower. The wheat in 1881 

 was sold at the mill in Akron for grinding. The straw, fed out in 

 the barn with wheat bran and oil-meal to stock I was wintering, 

 brought me $92 more than the feed cost. There .was a tremen- 

 dous lot of it. There were four large loads of sheaves per acre 

 when we drew in the wheat. Now remember, these facts were 

 published at the*timein our Ohio Report, and the men who helped 

 draw in the wheat and thresh it and draw it to Akron, and who 

 picked up and handled the potatoes, and knew all about it, read 

 this Report. The Secretary of the State Board lived in my town. 

 If I had desired to, you see, I would not have dared tell anything 

 but the exact truth. That was large enough. Why, I could 

 hardly contain myself when I was going to Akron every day and 

 bringing home $56 each night. When I brought home that $655 

 for wheat, I took $500 of it and paid the last of my old debt. So 

 you may know we had made considerable before that, but hardly 

 as much in any one year. 



1882 was an excessively wet season. Some of our wheat and 

 potatoes were entirely w r ashed out on side hills. We lost some 

 400 or 500 bushels of potatoes by rot for the first and last time. 

 This cut our returns down rather below the average. In the fore- 

 going figures only the merchantable potatoes actually sold were 

 counted. Some of the hay was fed to our horses. Along during 

 these years we lived comfortably, not as well as we do now, by 

 any means, but far better than at first, and after paying all ex- 

 penses, laid up on the average $1,000 a year towards paying our 

 debts (until they were settled) and building new house, etc. 

 During the two years aboved named our help cost us, board and 

 all, about $400 per year. As I have said, we got out of debt in 

 1 88 1. We also paid a neighbor, Edward McCauley, $380 for a 

 pair of horses that fall, and they were good ones. By the way, 

 they are the ones that have had only clover hay to eat for past 

 eleven years, which you will read about later on. In 1882 we 

 laid up some money. The old house was getting almost un -live- 

 in-able. We had waited long to make some show for what we 

 were doing. Two friends were talking together, and one said, 

 ' ' Terry is making money like smoke. " "I don't see as he is able 

 to build anew house," says the other. No one knew, you re- 

 member, that we had a heavy debt to pay and much interest be- 

 fore our home was our own. No wonder they had little faith in 

 my making money when we lived in such an old shell . All these 

 things taken together made us in a hurry to build our new home. 

 As we got nearer to the time when we could, it seemed as though 

 we could not live in the old house any longer. So in the spring 

 of 1883 we began to build, and also let out a link and put in 24 



