"Feed that corn! Not much we don't. Why, corn like that brings us close on to a dollar a bushel. No, Sir, we don't feed this corn. It's all used for meal. It makes the best kind of corn meal. No, we buy corn for feed; western corn. Oh, we feed lots of corn; three times as much as we raise; but we don't feed dollar corn, when we can buy western corn for seventy-five or eighty cents.
"I sell corn and I sell potatoes; that's all except the milk. I keep most of my land in meadow and pasture and feed everything I raise except the corn and potatoes. And milk is a good product with us. We average about sixty cents a pound for butter fat, and it's ready money every month; and, of course, we need it every month to pay for feed."
"Then you produce on the farm all the manure you use," suggested
Percy, "but I think you mentioned hauling seaweed."
"Yes, and I haul some manure, too, when I can get it; but usually there are three or four farmers ready to take every load of town manure."
"You get it from town for the hauling?"
"Well, I guess not," said Mr. Robbins emphatically and with apparent astonishment at such a question. "I don't think I would haul seaweed seven miles if I could get manure in town for nothing. Manure is worth $1.50 a ton Iying in the livery stable, and there are plenty to take it at that right along. I'd a little rather pay that than haul seaweed; but the manure won't begin to go around, and so there's nothing left for us but seaweed; and, if we couldn't get that, the Lord only knows what we could do."
"How much seaweed can you haul to a load, and about how many loads do you apply to the acre?"
"When the roads are good we haul a cord and a quarter, and we put ten or twelve loads to the acre for corn and then use some commercial fertilizer."
"Do you know how much a cord of the seaweed would weigh?"
"Yes, a cord weighs about a ton and a half."