“They put in a huge garden, must have been almost a couple of acres, figuring to sell what they didn’t eat. Poor kids didn’t know what they were getting into, didn’t have a clue how much work was involved in something that size. And I don’t know who they thought they’d sell the stuff to; nobody was about to drive way out there for produce we were all growing in our own backyards. They didn’t even have proper equipment, just hand tools anybody with a little garden plot would have, not what you need to work a patch that size.

“They were lucky that year. The weather was good, just the right rain at just the right times, so the grazing land kept up well enough with the cattle’s appetites, and the garden was real good. They lost a few hens with some disease, but still things went a lot better for them than anybody’d figured.

“Of course they found out the hard way that there wasn’t much trade around here in garden produce, although some of us went out specially to buy stuff, just to help them out. They caught on quick, though, and hired a truck to haul it all the way into the city and peddled it to a few small grocery stores. I don’t think they got the prices they wanted, but it was something, anyway, and he figured that the next year he’d rent some land by the main road and set up a produce stall. Catch a lot of people out for Sunday drives, tourists, he figured, and we all thought it was a pretty good idea.

“The best thing that happened to them that year, though, was the cattle prices. Can’t depend on them at all, but he was lucky; a lot of people were that year. By fall they were trading for a good bit more than they’d been in the spring, and his had fattened up, so he made enough to cover the bank loan and have some left over to support them and buy seeds in the spring. He was downright crowing that fall, for he’d made it when everybody’d said he wouldn’t, and it wasn’t much but he was pretty proud. They’d worked their fingers to the bone that year, both of them were rail-thin and stringy by fall, and brown as Indians, and she was looking pretty tired, but I think she was proud of what they’d done, too.

“We didn’t see much of them over the winter, just a couple of times they came into town, but it’s pretty hard when you’re way back in on those roads, and sometimes if there’s a storm the township don’t get round to plowing them out for a few days. But they were back in first thing in the spring.