When spring came and the trees and bushes leafed out, she took more interest in the farm, discovering its good points one by one--the flowering quince along the driveway, the pinks bordering the walk to the front door, the rosebushes in the yard, and cherry trees, currant and gooseberry bushes in abundance. Her father planted peach and apple orchards and worked the "sixpenny farm,"[24] as he called it, to the best of his ability, but the thirty-two acres seemed very small compared with the large Anthony and Read farms in the Berkshires, and he soon began to look about for more satisfying work. This he found a few years later with the New York Life Insurance Company, then developing its business in western New York. Very successful in this new field, he continued in it the rest of his life, but he always kept the farm for the family home. * * * * * The first member of the family to leave the Rochester farm was Susan. The cherry trees were in bloom when she received an offer from Canajoharie Academy to teach the female department. As Canajoharie was across the river from Uncle Joshua Read's home in Palatine Bridge and he was a trustee of the academy, she read between the lines his kindly interest in her. He was an influential citizen of that community, a bank director and part owner of the Albany-Utica turnpike and the stage line to Schenectady. Accepting the offer at once, she made the long journey by canal boat to Canajoharie, and early in May 1846 was comfortably settled in the home of Uncle Joshua's daughter, Margaret Read Caldwell. She soon loved Margaret as a sister and was devoted to her children. None of her new friends were Quakers and she enjoyed their social life thoroughly, leaving behind her forever the somber clothing which she had heretofore regarded as a mark of righteousness. She began her school with twenty-five pupils and a yearly salary of approximately $110. This was more than she had ever earned before, and for the first time in her life she spent her money freely on herself.