Leonard share cropped in the Silver Valley community in 1935, raising only a cotton crop.  The two years following he operated the Wilkinson flour mill in the Indian Creek community.  Late in 1937, Leonard and Edith bought the estate in the Silver Valley community, where they lived for thirty years.  The land is located three miles from the township of Silver Valley.  The land, fences, and buildings were all in a very bad condition; the fences and buildings were rebuilt, the land contoured and soon fertilized.  In 1943, the house was remodeled and rock veneered with rock found nearby.  Farming of cotton, small grains, feed grain and hay crops were grown for market of cotton and some small grain.  The remaining being used for animal feed.  After three years, he began to lease and rent more land.  In 1938, when they started farming, Edith’s father gave them twenty-five ewes.  Leonard bought that many or more from his uncle Clarence Saunders.  With two milk cows with calves, the herd and flock soon increased.  In the 1950’s a feedlot with running water and self-feeders on a small scale was started, steadily increasing with a storage barn built from the flour mill building, bought a molasses storage tank, a power feed mixer and the feed grinder purchased in the early 1940’s.  Leonard started feeding his own lambs and a few purchased ones as more feeders and space could be expanded until at one time the load numbered a thousand lambs and four self-feeders.  Fat lamb market decreased so much until 1966 he decided to discontinue lamb feeding and turned to calf feeding of twenty to thirty.  He fed calves two years, then retired. In 1939, he purchased his F. M. tractor with equipment and also bought a used small combine soon, which he used until 1956.  In 1956, he purchased a large Farmall tractor with equipment and a large Allis-Chalmers self-propelled combine that he used the rest of his farming.  A large machine shed made of tin was built to store the equipment.  In 1956, a double garage with farm shop attached on the back, almost large as the garage was built of tile and plastered, and an average flock of two hundred laying hens was maintained.  Leonard ground and mixed a formula feed for the hens and also ground and mixed his milk cow, ewe and lamb feed.  In March of 1968, we began selling the place and all that went with it.  E. M. and Patsy (Morris) Graves bought the land and sheep.  We moved into Coleman, where Leonard continued to work part time doing various jobs.