The Fat of the Land | Page 5

was to be given August 1st. On July 9th, Polly and I boarded an early
train for Exeter, intending to make a day of it in every sense. We
wished to go over the property thoroughly, and to decide on a general

outline of treatment. Polly was as enthusiastic over the experiment as I,
and she is energetic, quick to see, and prompt to perform. She was to
have the planning of the home grounds--the house and the gardens; and
not only the planning, but also the full control.
A ride of forty-five minutes brought us to Exeter. The service of this
railroad, by the way, is of the best; there is hardly a half-hour in the day
when one cannot make the trip either way, and the fare is moderate:
$8.75 for twenty-five rides,--thirty-five cents a ride. We hired an open
carriage and started for the farm. The first half-mile was over a
well-kept macadam road through that part of the village which lies west
of the railway. The homes bordering this street are of fine proportions,
and beautifully kept. They are the country places of well-to-do people
who love to get away from the noise and dirt of the city. Some of them
have ten or fifteen acres of ground, but this land is for breathing space
and beauty--not for serious cultivation. Beyond these homes we
followed a well-gravelled road leading directly west. This road is
bordered by small farms, most of them given over to dairying interests.
Presently I called Polly's attention to the fact that the few apple trees
we saw were healthy and well grown, though quite independent of the
farmer's or the pruner's care. This thrifty condition of unkept apple
orchards delighted me. I intended to make apple-growing a prominent
feature in my experiment, and I reasoned that if these trees did fairly
well without cultivation or care, others would do excellently well with
both.
As we approached the second section line and climbed a rather steep
hill, we got the first glimpse of our possession. At the bottom of the
western slope of this hill we could see the crossing of the
north-and-south road, which we knew to be the east boundary of our
land; while, stretching straight away before us until lost in the distant
wood, lay the well-kept road which for a good mile was our southern
boundary. Descending the hill, we stopped at the crossing of the roads
to take in the outline of the farm from this southeast corner. The
north-and-south road ran level for 150 yards, gradually rose for the next
250, and then continued nearly level for a mile or more. We saw what

Jane Austen calls "a happy fall of land," with a southern exposure,
which included about two-thirds of the southeast forty, and high land
beyond for the balance of this forty and the forty lying north of it.
There was an irregular fringe of forest trees on this southern slope,
especially well defined along the eastern border. I saw that Polly was
pleased with the view.
"We must enter the home lot from this level at the foot of the hill," said
she, "wind gracefully through the timber, and come out near those four
large trees on the very highest ground. That will be effective and easily
managed, and will give me a chance at landscape gardening, which I
am just aching to try."
"All right," said I, "you shall have a free hand. Let's drive around the
boundaries of our land and behold its magnitude before we make other
plans."
We drove westward, my eyes intent upon the fields, the fences, the
crops, and everything that pertained to the place. I had waited so many
years for the sense of ownership of land that I could hardly realize that
this was not another dream from which I would soon be awakened by
something real. I noticed that the land was fairly smooth except where
it was broken by half-rotted stumps or out-cropping boulders, that the
corn looked well and the oats fair, but the pasture lands were too well
seeded to dock, milkweed, and wild mustard to be attractive, and the
fences were cheap and much broken.
The woodland near the western limit proved to be practically a virgin
forest, in which oak trees predominated. The undergrowth was dense,
except near the road; it was chiefly hazel, white thorn, dogwood, young
cherry, and second growth hickory and oak. We turned the corner and
followed the woods for half a mile to where a barbed wire fence
separated our forest from the woodland adjoining it. Coming back to
the starting-point we turned north and slowly climbed the hill to the
east of our home lot, silently developing plans. We drove the full
half-mile of our eastern