30 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
little field added to those first started succeeded in 
aimost direct proportion to the amount of manure 
used and the thoroughness of the underdrainage. 
The next winter 300 lambs were fed, then 350, then 
350 again, and then a larger barn was built and 700 
were fed. The work grew easier and easier; wheat 
was dropped from the rotation, and no more timothy 
seed was sown. Lamb feeding promised profit, so 
finally it was resolved that lambs would be fed and 
crops grown that lambs liked, and nothing else. 
Meanwhile Willis and the writer bent their backs 
energetically in the ditches, draining more and more 
land, and hiring men to dig what they could not. 
Charlie, too, growing up a stalwart boy, helped 
cheerfully, and the three brothers were full of faith. 
And yet neighbors smiled, and some there were to 
sneer. It is true that when the new barn was built 
with a mow that could hold 100 tons of hay men 
asked smilingly if we thought we could borrow 
money enough to buy hay enough to fill it, and went 
off laughing when we declared that we would fill it 
from our own alfalfa meadows some day. No one 
else in the country was trying to grow alfalfa, so 
far as we knew, no one else in Ohio, though there 
was some grown in Onondaga Co., New York. Well, 
we filled the barn at last, and had an overflow. We 
fed a thousand lambs as we had dreamed, and we 
fed 1,200. We had learned how at last. Lamb feed- 
ing is an art, a science; it is not yet all learned. 
It had not all been smooth sailing, this lamb feed- 
mg. More than one disaster had overtaken us. 
