12 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



These valleys were fertile, they would yield food for 

 man' and beast, and alfalfa was the magic sesame 

 that made open the door to the riches of the valley. 



All this time the writer was becoming more and 

 more enthusiastic over the wonderful value of the 

 alfalfa plant. Back in Ohio was the old home farm 

 where he had spent his boyhood. It was a little 

 farm of less than 200 acres, charmingly diversified 

 by little hills, rich flat meadow lands, wet and half 

 wild, in which grew wild lilies and pink fragrant 

 spireas. There was woodland and pasture, a run- 

 ning stream, the Darby creek, with swimming holes 

 in it, a big pond where he had sailed his tiny ships 

 not so very many years before, a corn field, usually 

 of about 15 acres, meadows in irregular patches, 

 and an old apple orchard that bore famously 'of big 

 red apples. On that farm too was an old man once 

 tall but now bent and gray, weatherbeaten, seamed 

 and furrowed from exposure, with a kindly serious 

 face and a twinkling blue eye. That was the father. 

 And a mother, small and agile and energetic, rather 

 frail yet sunny and happy, ever singing at her work. 

 That was mother. And two younger brothers did 

 the work about the barns and went to school. These 

 younger brothers, men now, are yet on Woodland 

 Farm and are the writer's partners. 



The writer had been a very close friend of his 

 father, and together they had planned the work on 

 Woodland Farm before he had gone west, and now 

 the old man remembered his boy and knew of his 

 interest in the old place, so he used to write now 



