“I never knew it was such a simple matter to raise chicks, did you?” remarked Natalie, as she wiped her hands on the kitchen towel.
“No, and when you think of all the money we pay for roast chicken in New York, it makes you want to live always on a farm, doesn’t it?” added Janet.
But neither girl knew that many store eggs were not suitable for hatching chicks. They had not examined the yolks as chicken farmers do, to see if the egg was fertilized. So they had placed two suitable eggs, and five unfertilized eggs, under the hen. When but two chicks would result from that experiment, what a disappointment there would be. Janet would be sure to declare that stock-raising wasn’t such an easy business, after all!
CHAPTER X—TRIALS OF A FARMER’S LIFE
Mr. Ames brought the chickens and hens early in the morning, and so interested was Natalie in Janet’s stock-investment that the vegetable gardens were quite forgotten for a few days. Sunday she had spent at camp with the Girl Scouts; Monday she and Janet had gone to the Corners and enlisted girls to join them in a new Patrol, and in the afternoon they had picked cherries; then on Tuesday the chickens came, and some sort of a house had to be built for the pigs, as well as for the hens. So three days had passed by and she had not had time to inspect her gardens.
Farmer Ames acted huffy because the cherries had all been gathered when he drove up to the kitchen door in the morning. So he merely delivered the crate containing the hens and young chicks, and having handed Rachel the basket of eggs for the setting hen, drove away again.
“Dear me! I wanted to ask him how big a pen to build for three pigs!” sighed Janet, when she heard he had gone.
“No ’count why he hes to tell yuh that! I rickon anyone like me, what’s borned and brought up on a farm in Norf Car’liny, kin help dat way, better’n an ole grumpy farmer in Noo York state,” announced Rachel.
“All right, Rach, I’ll be thankful of your advice,” replied Janet, gazing down at the squirming pigs.
So Natalie and Janet occupied themselves most industriously in the building of a pig-pen for the little porkers, and in mending the old hen-house and chicken run. A separate coop was found where the setting hen might brood quietly on the eggs, and the young chicks were given their freedom of the place, because Rachel said they would grow much faster if they could run about and scratch.