cre. One farmer said that it was
"good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." I put no manure
whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and
not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it
all once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which supplied
me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mold,
easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of
the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood
behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the
remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the
plowing, tho I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first
season were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72-1/2. The seed
corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you
plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen
bushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn
and turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income from
the farm was

$23.44
Deducting the outgoes 14.72-1/2
--------------
There are left $ 8.71-1/2

besides produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was
made of the value of $4.50--the amount on hand much more than
balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things considered,
that is considering the importance of a man's soul and of to-day,
notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly
even because of its transient character I believe that that was doing
better than any farmer in Concord did that year.

[Footnote 31: From Chapters I and II of "Walden."]

The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I
required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience
of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on
husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply
and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate,
and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and
expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of
ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen
to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to
manure the old, and he could do all his