Seal 
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THE FIRST VISIT TO THE FARM 17 
the pasture lands were too well seeded to dock, 
milkweed, and wild mustard to be attractive, 
and the fences were cheap and much broken. 
The woodland near the western limit proved 
to be practically a virgin forest, in which oak 
trees predominated. The undergrowth was 
dense, except near the road; it was chiefly hazel, 
white thorn, dogwood, young cherry, and sec- 
ond growth hickory and oak. We turned the 
corner and followed the woods for half a mile to 
where a barbed wire fence separated our forest 
from the woodland adjoining it. Coming back 
to the starting-point we turned north and slowly 
climbed the hill to the east of our home lot, 
silently developing plans. We drove the full 
half-mile of our eastern boundary before turning 
back. 
I looked with special interest at the orchard, 
which was on the northeast forty. I had seen 
it on my first visit, but had given it little atten- 
tion, noting merely that the trees were well 
grown. I now counted the rows, and found 
that there were twelve; the trees in each row 
had originally been twenty, and as these trees 
were about thirty-five feet apart, it was easy to 
estimate that six acres had been given to this 
orchard. The vicissitudes of seventeen years had 
not been without effect, and there were irregular 
gaps in the rows, — here a sick tree, there a dead 
one. A careless estimate placed these casualties 
at fifty-five or sixty, which I later found was 
c 
