We were well satisfied with the profit we derived from our pigs during this second six months.  All the summer we kept four, at an expense of fifty-eight cents weekly, which was expended for two bushels of fine pollard (bran and meal).

We had such an abundance of vegetables from the garden and orchard, that we must have wasted cartloads, if we had not kept pigs to consume them.  As soon as the hay was carried they were turned into the meadows, and suffered to remain there till they were put up to fatten; a process which pigs must go through, though ducks can dispense with it.  I have already stated the expense of fattening them, and we never found it vary more than a shilling or two in a pig.

We always found for our family that a bacon pig of sixteen stone (244 pounds) was the best size, and for porkers about eight (112 pounds).

Our fruit was as plentiful as our vegetables,—­indeed we might have sold the surplus for many dollars; but we soon found that to do so was to lose caste in the neighborhood.  One piece of extravagance we were guilty of the first winter and spring we passed at A. The gardener had a little fire in the grapery during the severe weather, because he had placed some plants in it.  We were told we could continue it till the grapes ripened for a “mere nothing.”  Now “mere nothings” mount up to a “considerable something.”  The coal and coke consumed before they were ripe cost $20.  It is true we had them in July instead of September, but we should have liked them quite as well in that month.

It was a bad grape year, too,—­at least with us.  I don’t think we cut more than twenty pounds weight.  Hothouse grapes are not dear at $1 the pound; but we should have had them equally good by waiting two months later, when they would have cost us nothing.

Had we purchased the produce we received from our garden during the year, it would have been worth two guineas weekly.  Our peaches, apricots, and nectarines, were abundant, and very fine.  We had two splendid walnut-trees, and a mulberry-tree of immense size, which was an object of special abhorrence to “nurse,” as for more than two months in the summer the children’s frocks, pinners, &c., were dyed with the juice of the fruit.  They could hardly pass near it in the season without some of the ripe berries falling on their heads, and it was hardly possible to prevent them escaping from her to pick them up.  Mulberry-pudding made its appearance often on the nursery-table, and jars of mulberry-jam were provided to secure the same dainty through the winter.