Chapters 50 - 54 Summary

Hard Times Summary

Over the years, the problems took their toll. In a good year, the farm was able to produce eighty to ninety tons of coffee, but three times in its existence, the farm endured a year of drought that was disastrous to its fortunes. In two bad years, they had picked only fifteen and sixteen tons while at the same time coffee prices fell from around a hundred pounds per ton to sixty or seventy. Times grew hard on the farm and Karen, for her part, initiated numerous plans to save it.

With the aid of a Belgian refugee, she had one year tried to grow flax on the spare land, but she had tried to grow one hundred and fifty acres (to do less would have been a waste of time), when the refugee had said no more...