Chapter 17

As to the farm, it was doing pretty well. We’d got a big flock of sheep, so that the shearing took us above a week. We’d got a herd of pigs that kept Mother busy all the time the acorns lasted, tending them in the oakwood. The grass-meadow by the orchard was under wheat, but we had no good of it the first year, for the wheat sprouted and ackerspired in the ear, it being a very wet season. There was enough saved to buy two oxen for ploughing and other heavy work about the place. Being a bit out of fashion, they were…