The Fat of the Land Part 22

The tiles cost me five cents per foot, or $100 for the whole. The work was done by my own men.

CHAPTER L

THE HEADMAN GENERALIZES

Jackson's prophecy came true. The old lady died, and before the ground was fairly settled around her the improvident son accepted a cash offer of $75 per acre for his homestead, and the farm was added to mine. This was in November. I at once spent $640 for 2-1/2 miles of fencing to enclose it in one field, charging the farm account with $12,640 for the land and fence.

This transaction was a bargain, from my point of view; and it was a good sale, from the standpoint of the other man, for he put $12,000 away at five per cent interest, and felt that he need never do a stroke of work again. A lazy man is easily satisfied.

In December I sold 283 hogs. It was a choice lot, as much alike as peas in a pod, and gave an average weight of 276 pounds; but the market was exceedingly low. I received the highest quotation for the month, $3.60 per hundred, and the lot netted $2702.

It seems hard luck to be obliged to sell fine swine at such a price, and a good many farmers would hold their stock in the hope of a rise; but I do not think this prudent. When a pig is 250 days old, if he has been pushed, he has reached his greatest profit-growth; and he should be sold, even though the market be low. If one could be certain that within a reasonable time, say thirty days, there would be a marked advance, it might do to hold; but no one can be sure of this, and it doesn't usually pay to wait. Market the product when at its best, is the rule at Four Oaks. The young hog is undoubtedly at his best from eight to nine months old. He has made a maximum growth on minimum feed, and from that time on he will eat more and give smaller proportionate returns. There is danger, too, that he will grow stale; for he has been subjected to a forcing system which contemplated a definite time limit and which cannot extend much beyond that limit without risks. Force your swine not longer than nine months and sell for what you can get, and you will make more money in the long run than by trying to catch a high market. I sold in December something more than four hundred c.o.c.kerels, which brought $215.

The apples from the old trees were good that year, but not so abundant as the year before, and they brought $337,--$2.25 per tree. The hens laid few eggs in October and November, though they resumed work in December; but the pullets did themselves proud. Sam said he gathered from fourteen to twenty eggs a day from each pen of forty, which is better than forty per cent. We sold nearly eighteen hundred dozen eggs during this quarter, for $553. The b.u.t.ter account showed nearly twenty-eight hundred pounds sold, which brought $894, and the sale of eleven calves brought $180. These sales closed the credit side of our ledger for the year.

Apples $337.00 Calves 130.00 c.o.c.kerels 215.00 1785 doz. eggs 553.00 2790 lb. b.u.t.ter 894.00 283 hogs 2702.00 -------- Total $4831.00

In making up the expense account of that year and the previous one, I found that I should be able in future to say with a good deal of exactness what the gross amount would be, without much figuring. The interest account would steadily decrease, I hoped, while the wage account would increase as steadily until it approached $5500; that year it was $4662. Each man who had been on the farm more than six months received $18 more that year than he did the year before, and this increase would continue until the maximum wage of $40 a month was reached; but while some would stay long enough to earn the maximum, others would drop out, and new men would begin work at $20 a month. I felt safe, therefore, in fixing $5500 as the maximum wage limit of any year. Time has proven the correctness of this estimate, for $5372 is the most I have paid for wages during the seven years since this experiment was inaugurated.

The food purchased for cows, hogs, and hens may also be definitely estimated. It costs about $30 a year for each cow, $1 for each hog, and thirty cents for each hen. Everything else comes from the land, and is covered by such fixed charges as interest, wages, taxes, insurance, repairs, and replenishments. The food for the colony at Four Oaks, usually bought at wholesale, doesn't cost more than $5 a month per capita. This seems small to a man who is in the habit of paying cash for everything that enters his doors; but it amply provides for comforts and even for luxuries, not only for the household, but also for the stranger within the gates. In the city, where water and ice cost money and the daily purchase of food is taxed by three or four middlemen, one cannot realize the factory farmer's independence of tradesmen. I do not mean that this sum will furnish terrapin and champagne, but I do not understand that terrapin and champagne are necessary to comfort, health, or happiness.

Let us look for a moment at some of the things which the factory farmer does not buy, and perhaps we shall see that a comfortable existence need not demand much more. His cows give him milk, cream, b.u.t.ter, and veal; his swine give roast pig, fresh pork, salt pork, ham, bacon, sausages, and lard; his hens give eggs and poultry; his fields yield hulled corn, samp, and corn meal; his orchards give apples, pears, peaches, quinces, plums, and cherries; his bushes give currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries; his vines give grapes; his forests give hickory nuts, b.u.t.ternuts, and hazel nuts; and, best of all, his garden gives more than twenty varieties of toothsome and wholesome vegetables in profusion. The whole fruit and vegetable product of the temperate zone is at his door, and he has but to put forth his hand and take it. The skilled housewife makes wonderful provision against winter from the opulence of summer, and her storehouse is crowded with innumerable gla.s.s cells rich in the spoils of orchard and garden. There is scant use for the grocer and the butcher under such conditions. I am so well convinced that my estimate of $5 a month is liberal that I have taxed the account with all the salt used on the farm.

CHAPTER LI

THE GRAND-GIRLS

The click of Jane's hammer began to be heard in November, and hardly a day pa.s.sed without some music from this "Forge in the Forest." Sir Tom made a permanent station of the workshop, where he spent hours in a comfortable chair, drawing nourishment from the head of his cane and pleasure from watching the girl at the anvil. I suspect that he planted himself in the corner of the forge to safeguard Jane; for he had an abiding fear that she would take fire, and he wished to be near at hand to put her out. He procured a small Babc.o.c.k extinguisher and a half-dozen hand-grenades, and with these instruments he const.i.tuted himself a very efficient volunteer fire department. He made her promise, also, that she would have definite hours for heavy work, that he might be on watch; and so fond was she of his company, or rather of his presence, for he talked but little, that she kept close to the schedule.

Laura had a favorite corner in the forge, where she often turned a hem or a couplet. She was equally dexterous at either; and Sir Tom watched her, too, with an admiring eye. I once heard him say:--

"Milady Laura, it is the regret of me life that I came into the world a generation too soon."

Laura sometimes went away--she called it "going home," but we scoffed the term--and the doldrums blew until she returned. Sir Tom dined with us nearly every evening through the fall and early winter; and when he, and Kate and Tom and the grand-girls, and the Kyrles, and Laura were at Four Oaks, there was little to be desired. The grand-girls were nearly five and seven now, and they were a great help to the Headman. My terrier was no closer to my heels from morning to night than were these youngsters. They took to country life like the young animals they were, and made friends with all, from Thompson down. They must needs watch the sheep as they walked their endless way on the treadmill night and morning; they thrust their hands into hundreds of nests and placed the spoils in Sam's big baskets; they watched the calves at their patent feeders, which deceived the calves, but not the girls; they climbed into the grain bins and tobogganed on the corn; they haunted the cow-barn at milking time and wondered much; but the chiefest of their delights was the beautiful white pig which Anderson gave them. A little movable pen was provided for this favorite, and the youngsters fed it several times a day with warm milk from a nursing-bottle, like any other motherless child. The pig loved its foster-mothers, and squealed for them most of the time when it was not eating or sleeping; fortunately, a pig can do much of both. It grew playful and intelligent, and took on strange little human ways which made one wonder if Darwin were right in his conclusion that we are all ascended from the ape. I have seen features and traits of character so distinctly piggish as to rouse my suspicions that the genealogical line is not free from a cross of _sus scrofa_. The pig grew in stature and in wisdom, but not in grace, from day to day, until it threatened to dominate the place. However, it was lost during the absence of its friends,--to be replaced by a younger one at the next visit.

"Do _your_ pigs get lost when you are away?" asked No. 1.

"Not often, dear."

"It's only pet pigs that runds away," said No. 2, "and I don't care, for it rooted me."

The pet pig is still a favorite with the grand-girls, but it always runs away in the fall.

Kate loved to come to Four Oaks, and she spent so much time there that she often said:--

"We have no right to that $1200; we spend four times as much time here as you all do in town."

"That's all right daughter, but I wish you would spend twice as much time here as you do, and I also wish that the $1200 were twice as much as it is."

Time was running so smoothly with us that we "knocked on wood" each morning for fear our luck would break.

The cottage which had once served as a temporary granary, and which had been moved to the building line two years before, was now turned into an overflow house against the time when Jack should come home for the winter vacation. Polly had decided to have "just as many as we can hold, and some more," and as the heaviest duties fell upon her, the rest of us could hardly find fault. The part.i.tions were torn out of the cottage, and it was opened up into one room, except for the kitchen, which was turned into a bath-room. Six single iron beds were put up, and the place was made comfortable by an old-fas.h.i.+oned, air-tight, sheet-iron stove with a great hole in the top through which big chunks and knots of wood were fed. This stove would keep fire all night, and, while not up to latter-day demands, it was quite satisfactory to the warm-blooded boys who used it. The expense of overhauling the cottage was $214. Tom, Kate, and the grand-girls were to be with us, of course, and so were the Kyrles, Sir Tom, Jessie Gordon, Florence, Madeline, and Alice Chase.

Jack was to bring Jarvis and two other men besides Frank and Phil of last year's party.

The six boys were bestowed in the cottage, where they made merry without seriously interrupting sleep in the main house. The others found comfortable quarters under our roof, except Sir Tom, who would go home some time in the night, to return before lunch the next day.

With such a houseful of people, the cook was worked to the bone; but she gloried in it, and cackled harder than ever. I believe she gave warning twice during those ten days; but Polly has a way with her which Mary cannot resist. I do not think we could have driven that cook out of the house with a club when there was such an opportunity for her to distinguish herself. Her warnings were simply matters of habit.

The holidays were filled with such things as a congenial country house-party can furnish--the wholesomest, jolliest things in the world; and the end, when it came, was regretted by all. I grew to feel a little bit jealous of Jarvis's attentions to Jane, for they looked serious, and she was not made unhappy by them. Jarvis was all that was honest and manly, but I could not think of giving up Jane, even to the best of fellows. I wanted her for my old age. I suspect that a loving father can dig deeper into the mud of selfishness than any other man, and yet feel all the time that he is doing G.o.d service. It is in accord with nature that a daughter should take the bit in her teeth and bolt away from this restraining selfishness, but the man who is left by the roadside cannot always see it in that light.

CHAPTER LII

THE THIRD BECKONING

On the afternoon of December 31 I called a meeting of the committee of ways and means, and Polly and I locked ourselves in my office. It was then two and a half years since we commenced the experiment of building a factory farm, which was to supply us with comforts, luxuries, and pleasures of life, and yet be self-supporting: a continuous experiment in economics.

The building of the factory was practically completed, though not all of its machinery had yet been installed. We had spent our money freely,--too freely, perhaps; and we were now ready to watch the returns. Polly said:--

"There are some things we are sure of: we like the country, and it likes us. I have spent the happiest year of my life here. We've entertained more friends than ever before, and they've been better entertained, so that we are all right from the social standpoint. You are stronger and better than ever before, and so am I. Credit the farm with these things, Mr. Headman, and you'll find that it doesn't owe us such an awful amount after all."

"Are these things worth $100,000?"

"Now, John, you don't mean that you've spent $100,000! What in the world have you done with it? Just pigs and cows and chickens--"

"And greenhouses and sunken gardens and pergolas and kickshaws," said I.

"But seriously, Polly, I think that we can show value for all that we have spent; and the whole amount is not three times what our city house cost, and that only covered our heads."

"How do you figure values here?"

"We get a great deal more than simply shelter out of this place, and we have tangible values, too. Here are some of them: 480 acres of excellent land, so well groomed and planted that it is worth of any man's money, $120 per acre, or $57,600; buildings, water-plant, etc., all as good as new, $40,000; 44 cows, $4400; 10 heifers nearly two years old, $500; 8 horses, $1200; 50 brood sows, $1000; 350 young pigs, $1700; 1300 laying hens, $1300; tools and machinery, $1500; that makes well over $100,000 in sight, besides all the things you mentioned before."

"You haven't counted the six horses in my barn."

"They haven't been charged to the farm, Polly."

"Or the trees you've planted?"

"No, they go with the land to increase its value."