-21 cents a
bushel for corn and 16 for oats. I had storage room and to spare, and I
knew that I could get more than a third of a cent out of each pound of
corn, and more than half a cent out of each pound of oats. I recalled
the story of a man named Joseph who did some corn business in Egypt a
good many years ago, much in this line, and who did well in the
transaction. There was no dream of fat kine in my case; but I knew
something of the values of grains, and it did not take a reader of
riddles to show me that when I could buy cheaper than I could raise, it
was a good time to purchase.

As I said once before, there have been no serious crop failures at Four
Oaks,--indeed, we can show better than an average yield each year; but
this extra corn in my cribs has given me confidence in following my plan
of very liberal feeding. With this grain on hand I was able to cut
twenty acres of oats in Nos. 10 and 11 for forage. This was done when
the grain was in the milk, and I secured about sixty tons of excellent
hay, much loved by horses. We got from No. 9 a little less than twelve
tons of clover,--alfalfa furnished forty tons; and there was nearly
twenty tons of old hay left over from that originally purchased. With
all this forage, good of its kind, there was, however, no timothy or red
top, which is by all odds the best hay for horses. I determined to
remedy this lack before another year. As soon as the oats were off lots
10 and 11, they were ploughed and crossed with the disk harrow. From
then until September 1, these fields were harrowed each week in half
lap, so that by the time we were ready to seed them they were in
excellent condition and free from weeds. About September 1 they were
sown to timothy and red top, fifteen pounds each to the acre,
top-dressed with five hundred pounds of fertilizer, harrowed once more,
rolled, and left until spring, when another dose of fertilizer was used.

I wished to establish twenty acres of timothy and as much alfalfa, to
furnish the hay supply for the farm. With one hundred tons of alfalfa
and sixty of timothy, which I could reasonably expect, I could get on
splendidly.

From the first I have practised feeding my hay crop for immediate
returns. The land receives five hundred pounds of fertilizer per acre
when it is sown, a like amount again in the spring, and, as soon as a
crop is cut, three hundred pounds an acre more. This usually gives a
second crop of timothy about September 1,