The Hog 95 



Baker fed down standing corn in the creek 

 bottoms. The corn was planted in March, 

 laid by iri early June, and sowed with peas as 

 it was laid by. The peas, vine, and pod, 

 were worth a third as much as the corn for 

 feeding, then there was the benefit to the land. 

 The hogs ate the peas very nearly clean, they 

 also rooted and ravaged out dormant insects 

 in the soil. It was so light and black, all sorts 

 of creeping things infested it. When old 

 man Shack scouted what he called the sinful 

 waste o' good bread-corn — with mast enough 

 a-comin' to fatten hogs by the rigimint. Major 

 Baker only smiled and said his hogs paid 

 for all the corn they ate, in cut-worms, bud- 

 worms, and wire-worms. 



Old man Shack generally had hogs a-plenty, 

 but never fattened them — he let the mast do 

 it for him. By the middle of October the 

 flat-woods were full of acorns — unless, as 

 sometimes happened, the mast had not hit. 

 Such years the old man sold his hogs and 

 bought fat bacon of his neighbors. You did n't 

 never ketch him, he said, a-ploughin' and 

 a-sweatin' to raise corn to make meat for no 

 twelve children, an' wife an' dogs throwed 

 in. He would n't do it — no tetch ! No 

 sir-ee Bob ! He 'd swap a passel er hogs fer 

 all the meat they'd fetch — ef they didn't 

 fetch enough — why! his folks would jest 



