The Fat of the Land Part 11

Of course I had trouble in getting a dairymaid. I was not looking for the bouncing, buxom, red-cheeked, arms-akimbo, b.u.t.ter-colored-hair sort.

I didn't care whether she were red-cheeked and bouncing or not, but for obvious reasons I didn't want her hair to be b.u.t.ter-colored. What I did want was a woman who understood creamery processes, and who could and would make the very giltest of gilt-edged b.u.t.ter.

I commenced looking for my paragon in January. I interviewed applicants of both s.e.xes and all nationalities, but there was none perfect; no, not one. I was not exactly discouraged, but I certainly began to grow anxious as the time approached when I should need my dairymaid, and need her badly. One day, while looking over the _Rural New Yorker_ (I was weaned on that paper), I saw the following advertis.e.m.e.nt. "Wanted: Employment on a dairy-farm by a married couple who understand the business." If this were true, these two persons were just what I needed; but, was it true? I had tried a score of greater promise and had not found one that would do. Was I to flush two at once, and would they fall to my gun?

A small town in one of the Middle Western states was given as the address, and I wrote at once. My letter was strong in requirements, and asked for particulars as to experience, age, references, and nationality. The reply came promptly, and was more to my liking than any I had received before. Name, French; Americans, newly married, twenty-eight and twenty-six respectively; experience four and three years in creamery and dairy work; references, good; the couple wished to work together to save money to start a dairy of their own. I was pleased with the letter, which was an unusual one to come from native-born Americans. Our people do not often hunt in couples after this manner. I telegraphed them to come to the city at once.

It was late in April when I first saw the Frenches. The man was tall and raw-boned, but good-looking, with a frank manner that inspired confidence. He was a farmer's son with a fair education, who had saved a little money, and had married his wife out of hand lest some one else should carry her off while he was building the nest for her.

"I took her when I could get her," he said, "and would have done it with a two-dollar bill in my pocket rather than have taken chances."

The woman was worthy of such an extreme measure, for she looked capable of caring for both. She was a fine pattern of a country girl, with a head full of good sense, and very useful-looking hands and arms. Her face was good to look upon; it showed strength of character and a definite object in life. She said she understood the creamery processes in all their niceties, and that she could make b.u.t.ter good enough for Queen Victoria.

The proposition offered by this young couple was by far the best I had received, and I closed with them at once. I agreed to pay each $25 a month to start with, and explained my plan of an increasing wage of $1 a month for each period of six months' service. They thought they ought to have $30 level. I thought so, too, if they were as good as they promised. But I had a fondness for my increasing scale, and I held to it. These people were skilled laborers, and were worth more to begin with than ordinary farm hands. That is why I gave them $25 a month from the start. Six hundred dollars a year for a man and wife, with no expense except for clothing, is good pay. They can easily put away $400 out of it, and it doesn't take long to get fore-handed. I think the Frenches have invested $500 a year, on an average, since they came to Four Oaks.

It is now time to get at the dairy-house, since the dairy and the dairymaid are both in evidence. The house was to be on the building line, and both Polly and I thought it should have attractive features.

We decided to make it of dark red paving brick. It was to be eighteen feet by thirty, with two rooms on the ground. The first, or south room, ten feet by eighteen, was fitted for storing fruit, and afforded a stairway to the rooms above, which were four in number besides the bath.

The larger room was of course the b.u.t.ter factory, and was equipped with up-to-date appliances,--aerator, Pasteurizer, cooler, separator, Babc.o.c.k tester, swing churn, b.u.t.ter-worker, and so on. The house was to have steep gables and projecting eaves, with a window in each gable, and two dormer windows in each roof. The walls were to be plastered, and the ground floor was to be cement. It cost $1375.

As motive power for the churn and separator, a two-sheep-power treadmill has proved entirely satisfactory. It is worked by two st.u.r.dy wethers who are harbored in a pleasant house and run, close to the power-house, and who pay for their food by the sweat of their brows and the wool from their backs. They do not appear to dislike the "demnition grind," which lasts but an hour twice a day; they go without reluctance to the tramp that leads nowhere, and the futile journey which would seem foolish to anything wiser than a sheep. This sheep-power is one of the curios of the place. My grand-girls never lose their interest in it, and it has been photographed and sketched more times than there are fingers and toes on the sheep.

The expenditure for equipment, from separator to sheep, was $354. I made an arrangement with a fancy grocer in the city to furnish him thirty pounds, more or less, of fresh (unsalted) b.u.t.ter, six days in the week, at thirty-three cents a pound, I to pay express charges. I bought six b.u.t.ter-carriers with ice compartments for $3.75 each, $23 in all, and arranged with the express company to deliver my packages to the grocer for thirty cents each. The b.u.t.ter netted me thirty-two cents a pound that year, or about $60 a week.

In July I bought four thoroughbred Holsteins, four years old, in fresh milk, and in October, six more, at an average price of $120 a head,--$1200 in all. These reenforcements made it possible for me to keep my contract with the middleman, and often to exceed it.

The dairy industry was now fairly launched and in working order. It had cost, not to be exact, $7000, and it was reasonably sure to bring back to the farm about $60 a week in cash, besides furnis.h.i.+ng b.u.t.ter for the family and an immense amount of skim-milk and b.u.t.ter-milk to feed to the young animals on the place.

CHAPTER XXVI

LITTLE PIGS

By April 1st all my sows had farrowed. There was much variation in the number of pigs in these nineteen litters. One n.o.ble mother gave me thirteen, two of which promptly died. Three others farrowed eleven each, and so down to one ungrateful mother who contributed but five to the industry at Four Oaks. The average, however, was good; 154 pigs on April 10th were all that a halfway reasonable factory man could expect.

These youngsters were left with their mothers until eight weeks old; then they were put, in bunches of thirty, into the real hog-house, which was by that time completed. It was 200 feet long and 50 feet wide, with a 10-foot pa.s.sageway through the length of it. On either side were 10 pens 20 feet by 20, each connected with a run 20 feet by 120. The house stood on a platform or bed of cement 90 by 200 feet, which formed the floor of the house and extended 20 feet outside of each wall, to secure cleanliness and a dry feeding-place in the open. The cement floor was expensive ($1120 as first cost), but I think it has paid for itself several times over in health and comfort to the herd. The structure on this floor was of the simplest; a double wall only five feet high at the sides, s.h.i.+ngled roof, broken at the ridge to admit windows, and strong part.i.tions. It cost $3100. As in the brood-sow house, there is a kitchen at the west end. The 150 little pigs made but a small showing in this great house, which was intended to shelter six hundred of all sizes, from the eight-weeks-old baby pig to the nine-months-old three-hundred-pounder ready for market.

Pigs destined for market never leave this house until ripe for killing.

At six or seven months a few are chosen to remain on the farm and keep up its traditions; but the great number live their ephemeral lives of eight months luxuriously, even opulently, until they have made the ham and bacon which, poor things, they cannot save, and then pa.s.s into the pork barrel or the smoke-house without a sigh of regret. They toil not, neither do they spin; but they have a place in the world's economy, and they fit it perfectly. So long as one animal must eat another, the man animal should thank the hog animal for his generosity.

Now that my big hog-house seemed so empty, I would gladly have sent into the highways and byways to buy young stock to fill it; but I dared not break my quarantine. I could easily have picked up one hundred or even two hundred new-weaned pigs, within six or eight miles of my place, at about $1.50 each, and they would have grown into fat profit by fall; but I would not take a risk that might bear ill fruit. I had slight depressions of spirits when I visited my piggery during that summer; but I chirked up a little in the fall, when the brood sows again made good.

But more of that anon.

CHAPTER XXVII

WORK ON THE HOME FORTY

April and May made amends for the rudeness of March, and the ploughs were early afield. Thompson, Zeb, Johnson, and sometimes Anderson, followed the furrows, first in 10 and 11, and lastly in 13. Number 9 had a fair clover sod, and was not disturbed. We ploughed in all about 114 acres, but we did not subsoil. We spent twenty days ploughing and as many more in fitting the ground for seed. The weather was unusually warm for the season, and there was plenty of rain. By the middle of May, oats were showing green in Nos. 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13,--sixty-two acres. The corn was well planted in 15 and the west three-quarters of 14,--eighty-two acres. The other ten acres in the young orchard was planted to fodder corn, sown in drills so that it could be cultivated in one direction.

The ten-acre orchard on the south side of the home lot was used for potatoes, sugar beets, cabbages, turnips, etc., to furnish a winter supply of vegetables for the stock.

The outlook for alfalfa was not bright. In the early spring we fertilized it again, using five hundred pounds to the acre, though it seemed like a conspicuous waste. The warm rains and days of April and May brought a fine crop of weeds; and about the middle of May I turned Anderson loose in the fields with a scythe, and he mowed down everything in sight.

After that things soon began to look better in the alfalfa fields. As the season was favorable, we were able to cut a crop of over a ton to the acre early in July, and nearly as much in the latter part of August.

We cut forty tons from these twenty acres within a year from seeding, but I suspect that was unusual luck. I had used thirteen hundred pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre, and the season was very favorable for the growth of the plant. I have since cut these fields three times each year, with an average yield of five tons to the acre for the whole crop.

I like alfalfa, both as green and as dry forage. When we use it green, we let it lie in swath for twenty-four hours, that it may wilt thoroughly before feeding. It is then fit food for hens, hogs, and, in limited quant.i.ties, for cows, and is much relished. When used dry, it is always cut fine and mixed with ground grains. In this shape it is fed liberally to hens and hogs, and also to milch cows; for the latter it forms half of the cut-food ration.

While the crops are growing, we will find time to note the changes on the home lot. Nearly in front of the farm-house, and fifty yards distant, was a s.p.a.ce well fitted for the kitchen garden. We marked off a plat two hundred feet by three hundred, about one and a half acres, carted a lot of manure on it, and ploughed it as deep as the subsoiler would reach. This was done as soon as the frost permitted. We expected this garden to supply vegetables and small fruits for the whole colony at Four Oaks. An acre and a half can be made exceedingly productive if properly managed.

Along the sides of this garden we planted two rows of currant and gooseberry bushes, six feet between rows, and the plants four feet apart in the rows. The ends of the plat were left open for convenience in horse cultivation. Ten feet outside these rows of bush fruit was planted a line of quince trees, thirty on each side, and twenty feet beyond these a row of cherry trees, twenty in each row.

Near the west boundary of the home lot, and north of the lane that enters it, I planted two acres of dwarf pear trees--Bartlett and d.u.c.h.ess,--three hundred trees to the acre. I also planted six hundred plum trees--Abundance, Wickson, and Gold--in the chicken runs on lot 4.

After May 1, when he was relieved from his farm duties, Johnson had charge of the planting and also of the gardening, and he took up his special work with energy and pleasure.

The drives on the home lot were slightly rounded with ploughs and sc.r.a.per, and then covered with gravel. The open slope intended for the lawn was now to be treated. It comprised about ten acres, irregular in form and surface, and would require a good deal of work to whip it into shape. A lawn need not be perfectly graded,--in fact, natural inequalities with dips and rises are much more attractive; but we had to take out the asperities. We ploughed it thoroughly, removed all stumps and stones, levelled and sloped it as much as pleased Polly, harrowed it twice a week until late August, sowed it heavily to gra.s.s seed, rolled it, and left it.

Polly had the house in her mind's eye. She held repeated conversations with Nelson, and was as full of plans and secrets as she could hold. By agreement, she was to have a free hand to the extent of $15,000 for the house and the carriage barn. I never really examined the plans, though I saw the blue prints of what appeared to be a large house with a driving entrance on the east and a great wide porch along the whole south side.

I did not know until it was nearly finished how large, convenient, and comfortable it was to be. A hall, a great living-room, the dining room, a small reception room, and an office, bedroom, and bath for me, were all on the ground floor, besides a huge wing for the kitchen and other useful offices.

Above stairs there was room for the family and a goodly number of friends. We had agreed that the house should be simple in all ways, with no hard wood except floors, and no ornamentation except paint and paper.

It must be larger than our needs, for we looked forward to delightful visits from many friends. We were to have more leisure than ever before for social life, and we desired to make the most of our opportunities.

A country house is by all odds the finest place to entertain friends and to be entertained by them. They come on invitation, not as a matter of form, and they stay long enough to put by questions of weather, clothes, and servant-girls, and to get right down to good old-fas.h.i.+oned visiting.

Real heart-to-heart talks are everyday occurrences in country visits, while they are exceptional in city calls. We meant to make much of our friends at Four Oaks, and to have them make much of us. We have discovered new values even in old friends, since we began to live with them, weeks at a time, under the same roof. Their interests are ours, and our plans are warmly taken up by them. There is nothing like it among the turmoils and interruptions of town life, and the older we grow the more we need this sort of rest among our friends. The guest book at the farm will show very few weeks, in the past six years, when friends haven't been with us, and Polly and I feel that the pleasure we have received from this source ought to be placed on the credit side of the farm ledger.

Another reason for a company house was that Jack and Jane would shortly be out of school. It was not at all in accord with our plan that they should miss any pleasure by our change. Indeed, we hoped that the change would be to their liking and to their advantage.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DISCOUNTING THE MARKET

We broke ground for the house late in May, and Nelson said that we should be in it by Thanksgiving Day. Soon after the plans were settled Polly informed me that she should not spend much money on the stable.

"Can't do it," she said, "and do what I ought to on the house. I will give you room for six horses; the rest, if you have more, must go to the farm barn. I cannot spend more than $1100 or $1200 on the barn."

Polly was boss of this department, and I was content to let her have her way. She had already mulcted me to the extent of $436 for trees, plants, and shrubs which were even then grouped on the lawn after a fas.h.i.+on that pleased her. I need not go into the details of the lawn planting, the flower garden, the pergola, and so forth. I have a suspicion that Polly has in mind a full account of the "fight for the home forty," in a form greatly better than I could give it, and it is only fair that she should tell her own story. I am not the only one who admires her landscape, her flower gardens, and her woodcraft. Many others do honor to her tastes and to the evidence of thought which the home lot shows. She disclaims great credit, for she says, "One has only to live with a place to find out what it needs."