Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy, white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, having become better acquainted with it. By the middle of April my house was framed and ready for raising. At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighbourliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. I began to occupy it on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the meantime out of doors on the ground, early in the morning. When it stormed before my bread was baked I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. The exact cost of my house, not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was just over twenty-eight dollars. I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. _Farming_ Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it, chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes for the first season were, for employment, seed, work, etc., 14 dollars 72-1/2 cents. I got twelve bushels of beans and eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet corn. My whole income from the farm was 23 dollars 43 cents, a profit of 8 dollars 71-1/2 cents, besides produce consumed. The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land that I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plough it, and he could do all his necessary farm work, as it were, with his left hand at odd hours in the summer.