LOOKING BACKWARD
With the close of the third year ends the detailed history of the
factory farm. All I wish to do further is to give a brief synopsis of
the debit and credit accounts for each of the succeeding four years.
First I will say a word about the people who helped me to start the
factory. Thompson and his wife are still with me, and they are well on
toward the wage limit. Johnson has the gardens and Lars the stables, and
Otto is chief swineherd. French and his wife act as though they were
fixtures on the place, as indeed I hope they are. They have saved a lot
of money, and they are the sort who are inclined to let well enough
alone. Judson is still at Four Oaks, doing as good service as ever; but
I fancy that he is minded to strike out for himself before long. He has
been fortunate in money matters since he gave up the horse and buggy; he
informed me six months ago that he was worth more than $5000.
"I shouldn't have had five thousand cents if I'd stuck to that darned
old buggy," said he, "and I guess I'll have to thank you for throwing
me down that day."
Zeb has married Lena, and a little cottage is to be built for them this
winter, just east of the farm-house; and Lena's place is to be filled by
her cousin, who has come from the old country.
Anderson and Sam both left in 1898,--poor, faithful Anderson because his
heart gave out, and Sam because his beacon called him.
Lars's boys, now sixteen and eighteen, have full charge of the poultry
plant, and are quite up to Sam in his best days. Of course I have had
all kinds of troubles with all sorts of men; but we have such a strong
force of "reliables" that the atmosphere is not suited to the idler or
the hobo, and we are, therefore, never seriously annoyed. Of one thing I
am certain: no man stays long at our farm-house without apprehending the
uses of napkin and bath-tub, and these are strong missionary forces.
Through careful tilth and the systematic return of all waste to the
land, the acres at Four Oaks have grown more fertile each year. The soil
was good seven years ago, and we have added fifty per cent to its crop
capacity. The amount of waste to return to the land on a farm like this
is enormous, and if it be handled with care, there will be no occasion
to spend much money for commercial fertilizers. I now buy fertilizers
only for the mid-summer dressing on my timothy and alfalfa fields. The
apple trees are very heavily mulched, even beyond the spread of their
branches, with waste fresh from the vats, and once a year a light
dressing of muriate of potash is applied. The trees have grown as fast
as could be desired, and all of them are now in bearing. The apples from
these young trees sold for enough last year to net ninety cents for each
tree, which is more than the trees have ever cost me.
In 1898 these orchards yielded $38; in 1899, $165; in 1900, $530; in
1901, $1117. Seven years from the date of planting these trees, which
were then three years old, I had received in money $4720, or $1200 more
than I paid for the fifty acres of land on which they grew. If one would
ask for better returns, all he has to do is to wait; for there is a sort
of geometrical progression inherent in the income from all
well-cared-for orchards, which continues in force for about fifteen
years. There is, however, no rule of progress unless the orchards are
well cared for, and I would not lead any one to the mistake of planting
an orchard and then doing nothing but wait. Cultivate, feed, prune,
spray, dig bores, fight mice, rabbits, aphides, and the thousand other
enemies to trees and fruit, and do these things all the time and then
keep on doing them, and you will win out. Omit all or any of them, and
the chances are that you will fail of big returns.
But orcharding is not unique in this. Every form of business demands
prompt, timely, and intelligent attention to make it yield its best. The
orchards have been my chief care for seven years; the spraying,
mulching, and cultivation have been done by the men, but I think I have
spent one whole year, during the past seven, among my trees. Do I charge
my orchards for this time? No; for I have gotten as much good from the
trees as they have from me, and honors are easy. A meditative man in his
sixth lustrum can be very happy with pruning-hook and shears among his
young trees. If he cannot, I am sincerely sorry for him.
I have not increased my plant during the past four years. My stock
consume a little more than I can raise; but there are certain things
which a farm will not produce, and there are other things which one had
best buy, thus letting others work their own specialties.
If I had more land, would I increase my stock? No, unless I had enough
land to warrant another plant. My feeding-grounds are filled to their
capacity from a sanitary point of view, and it would be foolish to take
risks for moderate returns. If I had as much more land, I would
establish another factory; but this would double my business cares
without adding one item to my happiness. As it is, the farm gives me
enough to keep me keenly interested, and not enough to tire or annoy me.
So far as profits go, it is entirely satisfactory. It feeds and
shelters my family and twenty others in the colony, and also the
stranger within the gates, and it does this year after year without
friction, like a well-oiled machine.
Not only this. Each year for the past four, it has given a substantial
surplus to be subtracted from the original investment. If I live to be
sixty-eight years of age, the farm will be my creditor for a
considerable sum. I have bought no corn or oats since January, 1898. The
seventeen thousand bushels which I then had in my granary have slowly
grown less, though there has never been a day when we could not have
measured up seven thousand or eight thousand bushels. I shall probably
buy again when the market price pleases me, for I have a horror of
running short; but I shall not sell a bushel, though prices jump to the
sky.
I have seen the time when my corn and oats would have brought four times
as much as I paid for them, but they were not for sale. They are the raw
material, to be made up in my factory, and they are worth as much to me
at twenty cents a bushel as at eighty cents. What would one think of the
manager of a silk-thread factory who sold his raw silk, just because it
had advanced in price? Silk thread would advance in proportion, and how
does the manager know that he can replace his silk when needed, even at
the advanced price?
When corn went to eighty cents a bushel, hogs sold for $8.25 a hundred,
and my twenty-cent corn made pork just as fast as eighty-cent corn would
have done, and a great deal cheaper.
Once I sold some timothy hay, but it was to "discount the season," just
as I bought grain.
On July 18, 1901, a tremendous rain and wind storm beat down about forty
acres of oats beyond recovery. The next day my mowing machines, working
against the grain, commenced cutting it for hay. Before it was half cut,
I sold to a livery-stable keeper in Exeter fifty tons of bright timothy
for $600. The storm brought me no loss, for the horses did quite as well
on the oat hay as they ever had done on timothy, and $600 more than paid
for the loss of the grain.
During the first three years of my experiment hogs were very
low,--lower, indeed, than at any other period for forty years. It was
not until 1899 that prices began to improve. During that year my sales
averaged $4.50 a hundred. In 1900 the average was $5.25, in 1901 it was
$6.10, and in 1902 it was just $7. It will be readily appreciated that
there is more profit in pork at seven cents a pound than at three and a
half cents; but how much more is beyond me, for it cost no more to get
my swine to market last year than it did in 1896. I charge each hog $1
for bran and shorts; this is all the ready money I pay out for him. If
he weighs three hundred pounds (a few do), he is worth $10.50 at $3.50 a
hundred, or $21 at $7 a hundred; and it is a great deal pleasanter to
say $1 from $21, leaves $20, than to say $1 from $10.50 leaves $9.50.
Of course, $1 a head is but a small part of what the hog has cost when
ready for market, but it is all I charge him with directly, for his
other expenses are carried on the farm accounts. The marked increase in
income during the past four years is wholly due to the advance in the
price of pork and the increased product of the orchards. The expense
account has not varied much.
The fruit crop is charged with extra labor, packages, and
transportation, before it is entered, and the account shows only net
returns. I have had to buy new machinery, but this has been rather
evenly distributed, and doesn't show prominently in any year.
In 1900 I lost my forage barn. It was struck by lightning on June 13,
and burned to the ground. Fortunately, there was no wind, and the rain
came in such torrents as to keep the other buildings safe. I had to
scour the country over for hay to last a month, and the expense of this,
together with some addition to the insurance money, cost the farm $1000
before the new structure was completed. I give below the income and the
outgo for the last four years:--
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
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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.