FOURTEEN] CULTIVATION 



nine acres — as pretty a thing as I ever saw or ex- 

 pect to see. How much have you sold from it this 

 year?" I showed him my accounts, which netted 

 me over eleven hundred dollars for sales inside of 

 twelve months. "Man alive!" he said. "Here's 

 no big sale of anything except apples, but there's 

 honey, and cherries, and currants, and berries, and 

 plums, and trees, and vinegar, and cider, and chick- 

 ens, and eggs, and every dollar's worth sold to pri- 

 vate customers. You don't mean to say you sold 

 all these summer apples at eighty cents to one dol- 

 lar a bushel ? Why, mine rotted on the ground — 

 except a few that a pedler paid me twenty cents a 

 bushel for. And your own cider mill has ground 

 up over forty barrels of drops, and of unsalable 

 stock, so far — and it is only September 20th ? 

 Got an engine of your own, eh ? and a cider press ? 

 and a shop for repair ? How much was there saved 

 on those forty barrels.^ Vinegar twenty cents a 

 gallon, at least two gallons to a bushel from early 

 apples, and three from later fruit. That would be 

 from a dollar to two dollars a barrel from what I've 

 let rot. Cider at twenty- five cents a gallon ! Lordy, 

 man! Why, your drops average two dollars a 

 barrel, and you have sold your other apples at three 



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