AUTUMN RECKONING
We harvested the crops in the autumn of 1896, and were thankful for the
bountiful yield. Nearly sixteen hundred bushels of oats and twenty-seven
hundred bushels of corn made a proud showing in the granary, when added
to its previous stock. The corn fodder, shredded by our own men and
machine, made the great forage barn look like an overflowing cornucopia,
and the only extra expense attending the harvest was $31 paid for
threshing the oats.
Three important items of food are consumed on the farm that have to be
purchased each year, and as there is not much fluctuation in the price
paid, we may as well settle the per capita rate for the milch cows and
hogs for once and all. At each year's end we can then easily find the
cash outlay for the herds by multiplying the number of stock by the cost
of keeping one.
My Holstein cows consume a trifle less than three tons of grain each per
year,--about fifteen pounds a day. Taking the ration for four cows as a
matter of convenience, we have: corn and cob meal, three tons, and
oatmeal, three tons, both kinds raised and ground on the farm, and not
charged in this account; wheat bran, three tons at $18, $54; gluten
meal, two tons at $24, $48; oil meal, one ton, $26; total cash outlay
for four cows, $128, or $32 per head. This estimate is, however, about
$2 too liberal. We will, hereafter, charge each milch cow $30, and will
also charge each hog fattened on the place $1 for shorts and middlings
consumed. This is not exact, but it is near enough, and it greatly
simplifies accounts.
As I kept twenty-six cows ten months, and ten more for an average of
four and a half months, the feeding for 1896 would be equivalent to one
year for thirty cows, or $900. To this add $120 for swine food and $25
for grits and oyster shells for the chickens, and we have $1045 paid for
food for stock. Shoeing the horses for the year and repairs to machinery
cost $157. The purchased food for eight employees for twelve months and
for two additional ones for eight months, amounted to $734. The wage
account, including $50 extra to Thompson, was $2358.
A second hen-house, a duplicate of the first, was built before October.
It was intended that each house should accommodate four hundred laying
hens. We have now on the place five of these houses; but only two of
them, besides the incubator and the brooder-house, were built in 1896.
As offset to the heavy expenditure of this year, I had not much to show.
Seven hundred cockerels were sold in November for $342. In October the
pullets began laying in desultory fashion, and by November they had
settled down to business; and that quarter they gave me 703 dozen eggs
to sell. As these eggs were marketed within twenty-four hours, and under
a guarantee, I had no difficulty in getting thirty cents a dozen, net.
November eggs brought $211, and the December out-put, $252. I sold 600
bushels of potatoes for $150, and the apples from 150 of the old trees
(which, by the way, were greatly improved this year) brought $450 on the
trees.
The cows did well. In the thirty-three weeks from May 12 to December 31,
I sold a little more than 6600 pounds of butter, which netted me $2127.
We had 122 young hogs to sell in December. They had been crowded as fast
as possible to make good weight, and they went to market at an average
of 290 pounds a head. The price was low, but I got the top of the
market,--$3.55 a hundred, which amounted to $1170 after paying charges.
I had reserved twenty-five of the most likely young sows to stay on the
farm, and had transferred eight to the village butcher, who was to
return them in the shape of two barrels of salt pork, thirty-two smoked
hams and shoulders, and a lot of bacon.
The old sows farrowed again in September and early October, and we went
into the winter with 162 young pigs. I get these details out of the way
now in order to turn to the family and the social side of life at Four
Oaks.