60 
WALDEN. 
whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely 
a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much 
again, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got out 
several cords of stumps in ploughing, which supplied me 
with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin 
mould, easily distinguishable through the summer by the 
greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and 
for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, 
and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the re¬ 
mainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a 
man for the ploughing, though I held the plough myself. 
My farm outgoes for the first season were, for imple¬ 
ments, seed, work, &c., $14 72The seed corn was 
given me. This never costs any thing to speak of, unless 
you plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of 
beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, beside some 
peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips 
were too late to come to any thing. My whole income 
from the farm was 
$23 44. 
Deducting the outgoes, .... 14 72| 
There are left, ...... $8 71|, 
beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this 
estimate was made of the value of $4 50,—the amount 
on hand much more than balancing a little grass which 
I did not raise. All things considered, that is, con¬ 
sidering the importance of a man’s soul and of to-day, 
notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experi¬ 
ment, nay, partly even because of its transient character, 
I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in 
Concord did that year. 
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all 
the land which I required, about a third of an acre, and 
