106 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



Our field crops in that first year didn't turn 

 out so badly. Our college friend had said that 

 good farming ought to let us get seventy-five 

 bushels of corn to the acre on our land, once 

 the farm had been brought up to normal. Of 

 course we hadn't expected to do so well as that 

 in the first season. Our harvest gave us 

 twenty-six bushels to the acre. As that was 

 more than twice as much as our tenant farmer 

 had been getting, we managed to feel pretty 

 well satisfied. The average corn crop in all 

 the states over a ten-year period was just 

 twenty-six bushels to the acre. We had 

 nothing to complain about. We had saved 

 a pretty fair crop of hay cowpeas, millet, 

 sorghum and oats cut "in the milk"; and 

 there was a lot of corn fodder. Our new clear- 

 ings had brought into use several acres of wild 

 grass pasture. That wasn't nearly so good as 

 the pastures we could make by and by; but it 

 had carried our few cows over seven or eight 

 months with only a little extra feeding. 



When cold weather came on, we put up our 

 next year's supply of sugar-cured hams and 

 bacon. That was new work, but we did every 

 lick of it ourselves, according to directions 

 given us at the university experiment station. 



