Life on a Wisconsin Farm 



that grew in rich beds beneath the meadow 

 grasses and sedges as well as in the dry sunny 

 woods. And in different bogs and marshes, and 

 around their borders on our own farm and 

 along the Fox River, we found dewberries and 

 cranberries, and a glorious profusion of huckle- 

 berries, the fountain-heads of pies of wondrous 

 taste and size, colored in the heart like sunsets. 

 Nor were we slow to discover the value of the 

 hickory trees yielding both sugar and nuts. 

 We carefully counted the different kinds on 

 our farm, and every morning when we could 

 steal a few minutes before breakfast after doing 

 the chores, we visited the trees that had been 

 wounded by the axe, to scrape off and enjoy 

 the thick white delicious syrup that exuded 

 from them, and gathered the nuts as they fell 

 in the mellow Indian summer, making haste to 

 get a fair share with the sapsuckers and squir- 

 rels. The hickory makes fine masses of color 

 in the fall, every leaf a flower, but it was the 

 sweet sap and sweet nuts that first interested us. 

 No harvest in the Wisconsin woods was ever 

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