FARMS. 115 



half of corn, and sowed half an acre of wheat. He then 

 ploughed up a strip of soil by the roadside, where the wash of 

 the road had been accumulating for a long time, and carted it 

 into his barnyard and pig-sty, and purchased a couple of shotes. 



While carrying on these operations, he managed to work a 

 number of days with his team, for such of his neighbors as 

 required his assistance. Sometimes he worked for cash, and 

 sometimes exchanged work. 



Thus he went on till hay time. He cut his own hay in good 

 season, hiring a boy a few days to assist him, and tben worked 

 a month for 'Squire Jones, assisting him to secure his hay and 

 grain. The last time he hoed his own corn, he sowed a plenty 

 of turnip seed. After he had secured his crop of spring wheat, 

 he dug a ditch across the lower end of his field, about ten rods 

 long, and carted the mud and soil which he threw out, into his 

 barnyard and pig-sty. That which he put into the yard he 

 spread over the surface and ploughed it in with the soil, wliich 

 he had placed there in the spring from the roadside. This 

 process he repeated about once a week through the fall. 



His sister was his housekeeper through the summer and 

 autumn, and she took good care of his small dairy. He har- 

 vested his crops in good season, and found that he had three 

 hundred bushels of potatoes, seventy-five bushels of corn, and 

 seven bushels of wheat, and three cart-loads of turnips, and a 

 good store of garden vegetables. 



Of this crop, he sold two hundred bushels of potatoes for 

 fifty dollars, fifty bushels of corn for thirty-seven dollars, and 

 a hundred and twenty pounds of butter for thirty dollars. He 

 also had a plenty of apples for his own use, and some forty 

 bushels of poor apples, which instead of making into cider, he 

 fed to his pigs. During the year, he had worked out with his 

 team to the amount of somewhat more than a hundred dollars. 

 He was able at the expiration of a year from the time he had 

 purchased his place, to pay his taxes, the interest due, and a 

 hundred dollars on the principal ; and he had made several 

 valuable improvements on the place. 



On Thanksgiving Day, he was married to Betsy Fletcher, to 

 whom, as we have before said, he had been long attached. 

 She was an intelligent, industrious girl, of about his own age, 

 and had accumulated, chiefly by her own earnings, about three 



