While the building operations were being pushed forward, a carefully selected force of workers had been equally busy in making numerous agricultural improvements. Two thousand acres of virgin soil had been broken up and prepared for planting. One hundred acres of the best of this newly upturned soil, so clean and free from weeds, had been planted with a well selected series of vegetables, capable of producing a remunerative crop of assorted garden seeds. The series included all of the best known varieties with the addition of several new ones. As a result of skillful culture and favorable conditions, a great many tons of choice seeds had been grown, gathered and prepared for market. Large propagating gardens had been fitted and seeded with reference to the future demands of fruit and forestry culture. An abundant supply of all kinds of vegetables for farm use had been grown and stored. Goodly crops of corn, oats and potatoes, grown and harvested. Plenty of hay cut, cured and housed. Pastures, roomy enough to accommodate large herds of horses and cattle, securely enclosed, supplied with water and the proper shelter. Small herds of fine cattle and horses secured and well provided for. These herds were selected chiefly for breeding purposes, while a sufficient number of mules were purchased for the needs of the farm work. The bees in the well stocked apiary had already gathered a fine supply of honey from the wild flowers of the surrounding prairies. The extensive yards and buildings prepared for poultry farming on an unusually large scale, were so well stocked and in such fine condition as to promise large profits at an early day. In reviewing the work at the close of the first year, which included many important items not yet enumerated, the general results were so satisfactory that the officers and members of the Solaris Farm Company were very much encouraged. Owing to sales of seeds and brick in such considerable quantities, together with the manufacture at the farm of almost every kind of building material, the sum advanced by Fern Fenwick, the patroness, for farm buildings and equipment was less than one-half the amount named in Fillmore Flagg's estimate. The amount required for the coming year would be very much less. The general plan provided for and embraced the supplementing of agricultural work by a series of allied manufactures, such as naturally grew out of the needs of the farm: carpentering, blacksmithing, machine work and repairing, furniture making, turning, polishing, painting, staining and general wood working and finishing, pattern making, broom and brush making, a factory for spinning rope and cordage, basket and all kinds of osier weaving, brick making, pottery and all kinds of clay or porcelain work; together with many other things that would suggest themselves as time passed and the capacity of the farm was increased by the invention of better machinery and superior methods.