My feeding-grounds are filled to their
capacity from a sanitary point of view, and it would be foolish to take
risks for moderate returns. If I had as much more land, I would
establish another factory; but this would double my business cares
without adding one item to my happiness. As it is, the farm gives me
enough to keep me keenly interested, and not enough to tire or annoy me.
So far as profits go, it is entirely satisfactory. It feeds and
shelters my family and twenty others in the colony, and also the
stranger within the gates, and it does this year after year without
friction, like a well-oiled machine.
Not only this. Each year for the past four, it has given a substantial
surplus to be subtracted from the original investment. If I live to be
sixty-eight years of age, the farm will be my creditor for a
considerable sum. I have bought no corn or oats since January, 1898. The
seventeen thousand bushels which I then had in my granary have slowly
grown less, though there has never been a day when we could not have
measured up seven thousand or eight thousand bushels.
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