But, further, Johnny Halfacre’s garden, in which he seldom ceased from doing something in the summer evenings as long as daylight lasted, greatly aided in supporting his pig at that time when food is so dear and scarce for swine. The tops of blossoming bean-stalks (by the plucking off of which the crop is improved) and other vegetable waste, besides vetches and rye--the latter both in the green and ripe state--gave him sufficient food to keep the pig in fair order, with a little help from other sources; and the pig, by being always well littered, and supplied with this food, gave a return in most excellent manure, which with other sources of a similar kind, and the economical distribution of crops, supplied the entire garden with fertilizing matter. What the other means of providing manure were, ought to be mentioned, for the man’s system is of such easy application that it only requires to be stated in order to be followed. For two or three evenings in the summer before last, I perceived Johnny Halfacre without his coat, rolling a wheelbarrow frequently from an adjacent common to a corner of his garden separated from the road by an old weather-beaten paling. When I had leisure to see what he had been doing at this time, I found that he had marked off an oblong space for four geese and a gander, which he had bought from Bridget Gozzard at rather a high price, partly for the sake of their powerful manure, which, combined with other substances, is good for stimulating the growth of vegetables, as well as for the profit which he expected to realize by rearing goslings for the market. Johnny was aware that fat green geese are worth from six to ten shillings each, in the very early season in the great English markets, and are also profitable if reared for the stubbles at Michaelmas; and he did not see why he and his industrious wife should not realise a profit as well as English housewives by the breeding of such poultry, when a steam-packet and a rail-road could take them off even to London in a few hours. Cocks and hens would ruin his own garden, and bring him into disputes with his neighbours--he had the advantage of a run on the common for geese--there was a pond of water near his house--and therefore he gave them and ducks the preference. He first built his back wall two feet and a half high and ten feet in length, with the sods from the common, and then put down ten upright stakes in front, every pair answering for the jambs of each compartment, with a board stretching the whole length across, and which formed the front support of his rustic roof; from this board he laid rafters to the top of the back wall, and having first interwoven some small branches of a tree through these rafters, he laid as many scraws (thinly pared grassy sods) as secured the whole roof from rain. The jambs were then contracted to a narrow opening, for the sake of shelter and warmth, by more sods laid one over the other.