There is not much money in wheat-farming unless it
be done on a large scale, and I had no wish to raise more than I could
feed to advantage. Wheat was to be a change food for my fowls; but just
then I had no fowls to feed, and there were more than two hundred
bushels in stacks ready for the threshers, which I could hold for future
hens.
The ploughmen were now directed to commence deep ploughing on No.
14,--the forty acres set apart for the commercial orchard. This tract of
land lay well for the purpose. Its surface was nearly smooth, with a
descent to the west and southwest that gave natural drainage. I have
been informed that an orchard would do better if the slope were to the
northeast. That may be true, but mine has done well enough thus far,
and, what is more to the point, I had no land with a northeast slope.
The surface soil was thin and somewhat impoverished, but the subsoil was
a friable clay in which almost anything would grow if it was properly
worked and fed. It was my desire to make this square block of forty
acres into a first-class apple orchard for profit.
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