TOMATOES AND TROUBLE
Hiram Strong had decided that the market prospects of Scoville prophesied a good price for early tomatoes. He advised, therefore, a good sized patch of this vegetable.
He had planted in the window boxes seed of several different varieties. He had transplanted to the coldframe strong plants numbering nearly five hundred. He believed that, under garden cultivation, a tomato plant that would not yield fifty cents worth of fruit was not worth bothering with, while a dollar from a single plant was not beyond the bounds of probability.
It was safe, Hiram very well knew, to set out tomato plants in this locality much before the middle of May; yet he was willing to take some risks, and go to some trouble, for the sake of getting early ripened tomatoes into the Scoville market.
As Henry Pollock had prophesied, Hiram did not see much of his friend during corn-planting time. The Pollocks put nearly fifty acres in corn, and the whole family helped in the work, including Mrs. Pollock herself, and down to the child next to the baby. This little toddler amused his younger brother, and brought water to the field for the workers.
Other families in the neighborhood did the same, Hiram noticed. They all strained every effort to put in corn, cultivating as big a crop as they possibly could handle.
This was why locally grown vegetables were scarce in Scoville. And the young farmer proposed to take advantage of this condition of affairs to the best of his ability.
If they were only to remain here on the farm long enough to handle this one crop, Hiram determined to make that crop pay his employer as well as possible, although he, himself, had no share in such profit.
Henry Pollock, however, came along while Hiram was making ready his plat in the garden for tomatoes. The young farmer was setting several rows of two-inch thick stakes across the garden, sixteen feet apart in the row, the rows four feet apart. The stakes themselves were about four feetout of the ground.
"What ye doin' there, Hiram?" asked Henry, curiously. "Building a fence?""Not exactly."
"Ain't goin' to have a chicken run out here in the garden, be ye?""I should hope not! The chickens on this place will never mix with the garden trucks, if I have any say about it," declared Hiram, laughing.
"By Jo!" exclaimed Henry. "Dad says Maw's dratted hens eat up a couple hundred dollars' worth of corn and clover every year for him- runnin' loose as they do.""Why doesn't he build your mother proper runs, then, plant green stuff in several yards, and change the flock over, from yard to yard?" "Oh, hens won't do well shut up; Maw says so," said Henry, repeating the lazy farmer's unfounded declaration-probably originated ages ago, when poultry was first domesticated.
"I'll show you, next year, if we are around here," said Hiram, " whether poultry will do well enclosed in yards.""I told mother you didn't let your chickens run free, and had no hens with them," said Henry, thoughtfully.
"No. I do not believe in letting anything on a farm get into lazy habits. A hen is primarily intended to lay eggs. I send them back to work when they have hatched out their brood.
"Those home-made brooders of ours keep the chicks quite as warm, and never peck the little fellows, or step upon them, as the old hen often does.""That's right, I allow," admitted Henry, grinning broadly.
