FIRST FRUITS
For the first time since they had come to the farm, Hiram was the last to get up in the house. And when he came down to breakfast, still trembling from the exertion of the previous night, Mrs. Atterson screamed at the sight of him.
"For the good Land o' Goshen!" she cried. You look like a singed chicken, Hiram Strong! Whatever have you been doing to yourself?"He told them of the fight he had had while they slept. But he could talk about it jokingly now, although Sister was inclined to snivel a little over his danger.
"That Dickerson boy ought to be lashed--Nine and thirty lashes--none too much--This sausage is good--humph!--and pancakes--fit for the gods-- But he'll come back--do more damage--the butter, yes I I want butter--and syrup, though two spreads is reckless extravagance--Eh? eh? can't prove anything against that Dickerson lout?-well, mebbe not."So Old Lem Camp commented upon the affair. But Hiram could not prove that the neighbor's boy had done any of these things which pointed to a malicious enemy.
The young farmer began to wonder if he could not lay a trap, and so bring about his undoing.
As soon as the ground was in fit condition again (for the nights rain had been heavy) Hiram scattered the lime he had planned to use upon the four acres of land plowed for corn, and dragged it in with a spike-toothed harrow.
Working as he was with one horse alone, this took considerable time, and when this corn land was ready, it was time for him to go through the garden piece again with the horse cultivator.
Sister and Lem Camp, both, had learned to use the man-weight wheel- hoe, and the fine stuff was thinned and the weeds well cut out. From time to time the young farmer had planted peas--both the dwarf and taller varieties--and now he risked putting in some early beans--"snap" and bush limas--and his first planting of sweet corn.
Of the latter he put in four rows across the garden, each, of sixty-five day, seventy-five day, and ninety day sugar corn--all of well-known kinds. He planned later to put in, every fortnight, four rows of a mid-length season corn, so as to have green corn for sale, and for the house, up to frost.
The potatoes were growing finely and he hilled them up for the first time. He marked his four-acre lot for field corn--cross-checking it three- feet, ten inches apart. This made twenty-seven hundred and fifty hills to the acre, and with the hand-planter--an ingenious but cheap machine--he dropped two and three kernels to the hill.
This upland, save where he had spread coarse stable manure, was not rich. Upon each corn-hill he had Sister throw half a handful of fertilizer. She followed him as he used the planter, and they planted and fertilized the entire four acres in less than two days.
The lime he had put into the land would release such fertility as remained dormant there; but Hiram did not expect a big crop of corn on that piece. If he made two good ears to the hill he would be satisfied.
He had knocked together a rough cold-frame, on the sunny side of the woodshed, to fit some old sash he had found in the barn. Into the rich earth sifted to make the bed in this frame, he transplanted tomato, egg-plant, pepper and other plants of a delicate nature. Early cabbage and cauliflower had already gone into the garden plot, and in the midst of an early and saturating rain, all day long, he had transplanted table-beets into the rows he had marked out for them.
