I plead guilty to thirty-three per cent
lack of economy; the extenuating circumstances were, a wish to let the
members of my family do much as they pleased and have good things and
good people around them, and a somewhat luxurious temperament of my own.
Polly and I were too wise (not to say too old) to adopt farming as a
means of grace through privations. We wanted the good there was in it,
and nothing else; but as a secondary consideration I wished to prove
that it can be made to pay well, even though one-third of the money
expended goes for comforts and kickshaws.
It is not necessary to spend so much on a five-hundred-acre farm, and a
factory farm need not contain so many acres. Any number of acres from
forty to five hundred, and any number of dollars from $5000 to $100,000,
will do, so long as one holds fast to the rules: good clean fences for
security against trespass by beasts, or weeds; high tilth, and heavy
cropping; no waste or fallow land; conscientious return to the land of
refuse, and a cover crop turned under every second year; the best stock
that money can buy; feed for product, not simply to keep the animals
alive; force product in every way not detrimental to the product itself;
maintain a strict quarantine around your animals, and then depend upon
pure food, water, air, sunlight, and good shelter to keep them healthy;
sell as soon as the product is finished, even though the market doesn't
please you; sell only perfect product under your own brand; buy when the
market pleases you and thus "discount the seasons"; remember that
interdependent industries are the essence of factory farming; employ the
best men you can find, and keep them interested in your affairs; have a
definite object and make everything bend toward that object; plant apple
trees galore and make them your chief care, as in time they will prove
your chief dependence.
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