| INCOME | EXPENSES | TO THE GOOD | |
| 1899 | $17,780.00 | $15,420.00 | $2,360.00 |
| 1900 | 19,460.00 | 16,480.00 | 2,980.00 |
| 1901 | 21,424.00 | 15,520.00 | 5,904.00 |
| 1902 | 23,365.00 | 15,673.00 | 7,692.00 |
| ------------ | |||
| Making a total | to the good of | $18,936.00 |
These figures cover only the money received and expended. They take no account of the $4000 per annum which we agreed to pay the farm for keeping us, so long as we made it pay interest to us. Four times $4000 are $16,000 which, added to $18,936, makes almost $35,000 to charge off from the $106,000 of original investment.
Polly was wrong when she spoke of it as a permanent investment. Four years more of seven-dollar pork and thrifty apple growth will make this balance of $71,000 look very small. The interest is growing rapidly less, and it will be but a short time before the whole amount will be taken off the expense account. When this is done, the yearly balance will be increased by the addition of $5000, and we may be able to make the farm pay for weddings, as Polly suggested.
CHAPTER LXVII
LOOKING FORWARD
I am not so opinionated as to think that mine is the only method of farming. On the contrary, I know that it is only one of several good methods; but that it is a good one, I insist. For a well-to-do, middle-aged man who was obliged to give up his profession, it offered change, recreation, employment, and profit. My ability to earn money by my profession ceased in 1895, and I must needs live at ease on my income, or adopt some congenial and remunerative employment, if such could be found. The vision of a factory farm had flitted through my brain so often that I was glad of the opportunity to test my theories by putting them into practice. Fortunately I had money, and to spare; for I had but a vague idea of what money would be needed to carry my experiment to the point of self-support. I set aside $60,000 as ample, but I spent nearly twice that amount without blinking. It is quite likely that I could have secured as good and as prompt returns with two-thirds of this expenditure. 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. These are some of the principles of factory farming, and one doesn't have to be old, or rich, to put them into practice.
I would exchange my age, money, and acres for youth and forty acres, and think that I had the best of the bargain; and I would start the factory by planting ten acres of orchard, buying two sows, two cows, and two setting hens. Youth, strength, and hustle are a great sight better than money, and the wise youth can have a finer farm than mine before he passes the half-century mark, even though he have but a bare forty to begin with.