While Janet had been occupied at the chicken yard, Frances had brought home the “Stock Farmer’s Catalogue” that Janet had written for. It had come in the morning’s mail and now was on the porch table. Janet caught it up eagerly and sat down to pore over the pages. Soon she was deeply interested in reading about cows.
She read that the profit in keeping a cow was enormous. Saying that one cow milked but the minimum quantity of twelve quarts of milk a day—which was very little for a good cow (so the book said) one could have all the pure milk needed in the home, your floods of rich cream over berries and cereal, and have cream for coffee at breakfast time; make butter, and drink refreshing butter milk on warm summer days, and still have enough milk, cream, butter and buttermilk to sell to the neighbors to pay for the keep of the cow.
“My, I never dreamed that money was so easy to make as all this!” sighed Janet to herself, as she wondered why she had been led into spending her capital for hens and pigs and had never thought seriously of a cow!
She took a sheet of paper from the book and having a stump of a pencil in her pocket, she began figuring.
“We are paying Ames sixteen cents a quart for milk. He sells us four quarts a day for the house, and I have to buy two to four extra for those pigs. I suppose Miss Mason gets about four quarts for her scouts besides. That totals ten to twelve quarts.
“If I keep a cow, I can sell all that milk to the other girls and give my pigs skim-milk, ’cause this book says skim-milk is as good for them as pure milk. That’s sixteen times twelve every day.
“This book says I can get about ninety cents a quart for the heavy cream and about sixty for light cream. I don’t know the difference, but I will accept those figures. That’s ninety plus sixty cents more, every day. That makes one ninety-two for milk and one fifty for cream—two dollars and forty cents every day. Then there is my saving of milk for the pigs, and the money made on the butter I might churn once or twice a week. Oh, what a fortune!”
Janet rocked in the chair as she sighed and rolled her eyes skyward as if for inspiration of ways or means to find a cow. Then she turned her attention to the book, once more.
“It says here that a bag of feed will cost about three dollars and a bag lasts about twelve days. That will make three bags a month—about nine dollars for feed. Then the life insurance, accident and illness costs about a dollar a month. But that is a good idea—to insure the cow!” Janet sat approving the insurance plan and then and there determined to heavily insure the life of her cow.
“Well, that’s all it will cost, and just balance that with the income! Phew, it seems almost incredible!” murmured Janet as she studied the figures.