Every egg is worth, in my market, 2-1/2 cents, which means that the yearly product of each hen could be sold for $3. Something more than two thousand dozen are consumed by the home colony or the incubators; the rest find their way to the city in clean cartons of one dozen each, with a stencil of Four Oaks and a guarantee that they are not twenty-four hours old when they reach the middleman.
In return for this $3 a year, what do I give my hens besides a clean house and yard? A constant supply of fresh water, sharp grits, oyster shells, and a bath of road dust and sifted ashes, to which is added a pinch of insect powder. Twice each day five pounds of fresh skim-milk is given to each flock of forty. In the morning they have a warm mash composed of (for 1600 hens) 50 pounds of alfalfa hay cut fine and soaked all night in hot water, 50 pounds of corn meal, 50 pounds of oat meal, 50 pounds of bran, and 20 pounds of either meat meal or cotton-seed meal. At noon they get 100 pounds of mixed grains—wheat and buckwheat usually—with some green vegetables to pick at; and at night 125 to 150 pounds of whole corn. There are variations of this diet from time to time, but no radical change. I have read much of a balanced ration, but I fancy a hen will balance her own ration if you give her the chance.
Milk is one of the most important items on this bill of fare, and all hens love it. It should be fed entirely fresh, and the crocks or earthen dishes from which it is eaten should be thoroughly cleansed each day. Four ounces for each hen is a good daily ration, and we divide this into two feedings.
Our 1600 hens eat about 75 tons of grain a year. Add to this the 100 tons which 50 cows will require, 200 tons for the swine, and 25 tons for the horses, and we have 400 tons of grain to provide for the stock on the factory farm. Nearly a fourth of this, in the shape of bran, gluten meal, oil meal, and meat meal, must be purchased, for we have no way of producing it. For the other 300 tons we must look to the land or to a low market. Three hundred tons of mixed grains means something like 13,000 bushels, and I cannot hope to raise this amount from my land at present.
Fortunately the grain market was to my liking in January of 1898; and though there were still more than 7000 bushels in my granary, I purchased 5000 bushels of corn and as much oats against a higher market. The corn cost 27 cents a bushel and the oats 22, delivered at Exeter, the 10,000 bushels amounting to $2450, to be charged to the farm account.
I was now prepared to face the food problem, for I had more than 17,000 bushels of grain to supplement the amount the farm would produce, and to tide me along until cheap grain should come again, or until my land should produce enough for my needs. The supply in hand plus that which I could reasonably expect to raise, would certainly provide for three years to come, and this is farther than the average farmer looks into the future. But I claim to be more enterprising than an average farmer, and determined to keep my eyes open and to take advantage of any favorable opportunity to strengthen my position.
In the meantime it was necessary to force my trees, and to secure more help for the farm work. To push fruit trees to the limit of healthy growth is practical and wise. They can accomplish as much in growth and development in three years, when judiciously stimulated, as in five or six years of the "lick-and-a-promise" kind of care which they usually receive.
A tree must be fed first for growth and afterward for fruit, just as a pig is managed, if one wishes quick returns. To plant a tree and leave it to the tenderness of nature, with only occasional attention, is to make the heart sick, for it is certain to prove a case of hope deferred. In the fulness of time the tree and "happy-go-lucky" nature will prove themselves equal to the development of fruit; but they will be slow in doing it. It is quite as well for the tree, and greatly to the advantage of the horticulturist, to cut two or three years out of this unprofitable time. All that is necessary to accomplish this is: to keep the ground loose for a space around the tree somewhat larger than the spread of its branches; to apply fertilizers rich in nitrogen; to keep the whole of the cultivated space mulched with good barn-yard manure, increasing the thickness of the mulch with coarse stuff in the fall, so as to lengthen the season of root activity; and to draw the mulch aside about St. Patrick's Day, that the sun's rays may warm the earth as early as possible. Moderate pruning, nipping back of exuberant branches, and two sprayings of the foliage with Bordeaux mixture, to keep fungus enemies in check, comprise all the care required by the growing tree. This treatment will condense the ordinary growth of five years into three, and the tree will be all the better for the forcing.
As soon as fruit spurs and buds begin to show themselves, the treatment should be modified, but not remitted. Less nitrogen and more phosphoric acid and potash are to be used, and the mulch should not be removed in the early spring. The objects now are, to stimulate the fruit buds and to retard activity in the roots until the danger from late frosts is past. As a result of this kind of treatment, many varieties of apple trees will give moderate crops when the roots are seven, and the trunks are six years old. Fruit buds showed in abundance on many of my trees in the fall of 1897, especially on the Duchess and the Yellow Transparent, and I looked for a small apple harvest that year.