Making Home Profitable

by Kate V. Saint Maur

He stipulated also that transportation to and from his business in the city, and all other expenses, should come within the newly necessary curtailment of expenses, which limited rent to twenty-five dollars a month and the housekeeping allowance to twelve dollars a week; that none of our very limited capital should be risked, excepting one hundred dollars to cover expense of moving, etc., and that even this sum should be considered as a loan. To satisfy the dear man’s cautious, masculine ideas of fairness, I took twenty-four hours to consider the conditions, and then, with solemn, businesslike gravity, accepted.

A painstaking advertisement in a Sunday paper, stating plainly that we wanted a small farm near the city and a railway station, the rent not to exceed fifteen dollars a month, brought dozens of letters offering all sorts of places at all sorts of distances and prices, but only six real answers. With the writers of these six letters I corresponded; studied innumerable railway guides; took several fruitless journeys; hesitated about two or three places, then just stumbled upon the right place.

It is like choosing a new hat or garment. You like that one, but this one is more becoming. You suddenly see something else quite different—hesitancy is over; the unconscious ideal is found.

The house was long and low and white, standing at the end of the road, facing a somewhat neglected, old-fashioned flower garden, which verged into five acres of orchard bounded by a river. The man who was driving me didn’t know to whom the place belonged. I got out, looked in at the windows, made out that there was a wide hall through the centre and two big old-fashioned fireplaces and a lot of odd cupboards.

Outside there was a wood-shed, summer kitchen, small smoke-house, barn, cow shed, corn-crib and chicken house. My original destination was forgotten. I was driven back to the station; found out who the owner was, and where he lived; drove over there, and ascertained that the house contained four large rooms and one small one, kitchen, pantry and two cellars downstairs, and five rooms and an attic upstairs.

There are one hundred and eighty acres of land or more, but the landlord would divide it to suit good tenants, which he evidently thought we would be, for subsequently we arranged to take the house, buildings, orchard, twelve acres of farm land and four acres of woodland on a three years’ lease, at a rental of fifteen dollars a month, with the privilege of taking the remainder of the land at any time during our tenancy for an extra five dollars a month, and an option of purchase.

Really, it seemed too good to be true, for it was within the prescribed distance from the city and depot, the price of commutation being only six dollars a month. The river, the old-fashioned garden with its two great catalpa trees shading the house, and the beauty of the surrounding scenery, made it almost a realization of our ideal home. Thankful joy filled our hearts even before we had experienced the glorious invigoration of an industrious outdoor life on the farm, where each day brings some new interest.

All our goods and chattels, including two cats and a canary, were packed in two vans, which took them the entire twenty-eight miles for thirty dollars. A kitchen stove cost thirty-five dollars; three wash tubs, four lamps and a few necessary tools absorbed another twenty-five dollars; and the last ten of the hundred dollars was spent in straw matting, which we divided between two bedrooms.

Of course, I had to start at the very bottom of the ladder, buying only with the money that I could save from week to week from my housekeeping allowance. A few hens, a few ducks, gradually through the poultry family, then an incubator and brooder, to the dignity of a horse and cow; after whose acquisition, the home became self-supporting, the third year showing a surplus profit.

Of course, there were difficulties and troubles to be overcome, but they were all the direct result of my own ignorance. A friend well posted in country-home making, from whom I could have acquired vicarious experience, would have prevented most of them. Hence my desire to pass on to practical lessons, learned during the last sixteen years, for the benefit of other women.