They dried nearly two tons of apples, which, if I remember right, brought six cents a pound that year.

The profit from that venture alone nearly paid for the haymaker.
The weather was bright the next haying time, so bright indeed that it was scarcely worth while to dry grass in the haymaker; and the next summer was just as sunny.

It was in the spring of that second year that Theodora and Ellen asked whether they might not put their boxes of flower seeds and tomato seeds into the haymaker to give them an earlier start, for the spring suns warmed the ground under the glass roof while the snow still lay on the ground outside.

In Maine it is never safe to plant a garden much before the middle of May; but we sometimes tried to get an earlier start by means of hotbeds on the south side of the farm buildings.

In that way we used to start tomatoes, radishes, lettuce and even sweet corn, early potatoes, carrots and other vegetables, and then transplanted them to the open garden when settled warm weather came.
The girls' suggestion gave us the idea of using the haymaker as a big hothouse.