The Fat of the Land Part 9

We located the site of the building, and talked plans until the low sun of January 8th disappeared in the west. Then we adjourned to the sitting room of the farm-house to finish the matter so far as was possible. An hour and a half pa.s.sed, and we were in fair accord, when Mrs. Thompson came into the room to say that supper was ready, and to ask us to join the men at table before starting homeward. I was glad of the opportunity, for I was curious to know if Mrs. Thompson set a good table. We went into the dining room just as the farm family was ready to sit down. There were ten of us,--two women, six men, Nelson, and myself; and as we sat down, I noticed with pleasure that each had evidently taken some thought of the obligations which a table ought to impose. The table was clothed in clean white, and there was a napkin at each plate.

Nelson and I had the only perfectly fresh ones, and this I took as evidence that napkins were usual. The food was all on the table, and was very satisfactory to look at. Thompson sat at one end, and before him, on a great platter, lay two dozen or more pieces of fried salt pork, crisp in their sh.e.l.ls of browned flour, and fit for a king. On one side of the platter was a heaping dish of steaming potatoes. A knife had been drawn once around each, just to give it a chance to expand and show mealy white between the gaping circles that covered its bulk. At the other side was a boat of milk gravy, which had followed the pork into the frying-pan and had come forth fit company for the boiled potatoes. I went back forty years at one jump, and said,--

"I now renew my youth. Is there anything better under the sun than fried salt pork and milk gravy? If there is, don't tell me of it, for I have wors.h.i.+pped at this shrine for forty years, and my faith must not be shaken."

Such a supper twice or thrice a week would warm the c.o.c.kles of my old heart; but Polly says, "No modern cook can make these things just right; and if not just right, they are horrid." That is true; it takes an artist or a mother to fry salt pork and make milk gravy.

There were other things on the table,--quant.i.ties of bread and b.u.t.ter, apple sauce (in a dish that would hold half a peck), stacks of fresh ginger-bread, tea, and great pitchers of milk; but naught could distract my attention from the _piece de resistance_. Thrice I sent my plate back, and then could do no more. That meal convinced me that I could trust Mrs. Thompson. A woman who could fry salt pork as my mother did, was a woman to be treasured.

I left the farm-house at 7, and reached home by 8.45. Polly was not quite pleased with my late hours; she said it did not worry her not to know where I was, but it was annoying.

"Can't you have a telephone put into the farm-house? It would be convenient in a lot of ways."

"Why, of course; I don't see why it can't be done at once. I'll make application this very night."

It was six weeks before we really got a wire to the farm, but after that we wondered how we ever got along without it.

CHAPTER XX

A RATION FOR PRODUCT

Nelson was to commence work on the cow-house at once; at least, the mason was. I left the job as a whole to Nelson, and he made some sort of contract with the mason. The agreement was that I should pay $4260 for the barn complete. The machinery we put into it was very simple,--a water heater and two cauldrons for cooking food. All three cost about $60.

Thompson had selected six cows, from those bought with the place, as worth wintering. They were now giving from six to eight quarts each, and were due to come in in April and May. An eight-quart-a-day cow was not much to my liking, but Thompson said that with good care they would do better in the spring. "Four of those cows ought to make fine milkers,"

he said; "they are built for it,--long bodies, big bags, milk veins that stand out like crooked welts, light shoulders, slender necks, and lean heads. They are young, too; and if you'll dehorn them, I believe they'll make your thoroughbreds hump themselves to keep up with them at the milk pail. You see, these cows never had more than half a chance to show what they could do. They have never been 'fed for milk.' Farmers don't do that much. They think that if a cow doesn't bawl for food or drink she has enough. I suppose she has enough to keep her from starving, and perhaps enough to hold her in fair condition, but not enough to do this and fill the milk pail, too. I read somewhere about a ration for 'maintenance' and one for 'product,' and there was a deal of difference.

Most farmers don't pay much attention to these things, and I guess that's one reason why they don't get on faster."

"You've got the whole matter down fine in that 'ration for product,'

Thompson, and that's what we want on this farm. A ration that will simply keep a cow or a hen in good health leaves no margin for profit.

Cows and hens are machines, and we must treat them as such. Crowd in the raw material, and you may look for large results in finished product.

The question ought always to be, How much can a cow eat and drink? not, How little can she get on with? Grain and forage are to be turned into milk, and the more of these foods our cows eat, the better we like it.

If these machines work imperfectly, we must get rid of them at once and at any price. It will not pay to keep a cow that persistently falls below a high standard. We waste time on her, and the smooth running of the factory is interrupted. I'm going to place a standard on this farm of nine thousand pounds a year for each matured cow; I don't think that too high. If a cow falls much below that amount, she must give place to a better one, for I'm not making this experiment entirely for my health.

The standard isn't too high, yet it's enough to give a fine profit. It means at least three hundred and fifty pounds of b.u.t.ter a year, and in this case the b.u.t.ter means at least thirty cents a pound, or more than $100 a year for each cow. This is all profit, if one wishes to figure it by itself, for the skimmed milk will more than pay for the food and care. But why did you say dehorn the cows?"

"Well, I notice that a man with a club is almost sure to find some use for it. If he isn't pounding the fence or throwing it at a dog, he's snipping daisies or knocking the heads off bull-thistles. He's always doing something with it just because he has it in his hand. It's the same way with a cow. If she has horns, she'll use them in some way, and they take her mind off her business. No, sir; a cow will do a lot better without horns. There's mighty little to distract her attention when her clubs are gone."

"What breeds of cows have you handled, Thompson?"

"Not any thoroughbreds that I know of; mostly common kinds and grade Jerseys or Holsteins."

"I'm going to put a small herd of thorough bred Holsteins on the place."

"Why don't you try thoroughbred Jerseys' They'll give as much b.u.t.ter, and they won't eat more than half as much."

"You don't quite catch my idea, Thompson. I want the cow that will eat the most, if she is, at the same time, willing to pay for her food. I mean to raise a lot of food, and I want a home market for it. What comes from the land must go back to it, or it will grow thin. The Holstein will eat more than the Jersey, and, while she may not make more b.u.t.ter, she will give twice as much skimmed milk and furnish more fertilizer to return to the land. Fresh skimmed milk is a food greatly to be prized by the factory-farm man; and when we run at full speed, we shall have three hundred thousand pounds of it to feed.

"I have purchased twenty three-year-old Holstein cows, in calf to advanced registry bulls, and they are to be delivered to me March 10. I shall want you to go and fetch them. I also bought a young bull from the same herd, but not from the same breeding. These twenty-one animals will cost, by the time they get here, $2200. I shall give the bull to my neighbor Jackson. He will be proud to have it, and I shall be relieved of the care of it. Be good to your neighbor, Thompson, if by so doing you can increase the effectiveness of the factory farm. We will start the dairy with twenty thoroughbreds and six scrubs. I shall probably buy and sell from time to time; but of one thing I am certain: if a cow cannot make our standard, she goes to the butcher, be she mongrel or thoroughbred. What do you think of Judson as a probable dairyman?"

"I shouldn't wonder if he would do first-rate. He's a quiet fellow, and cows like that. He has those roans tagging him all over the place; and if a horse likes a man, it's because he's nice and quiet in his ways. I notice that he can milk a cow quicker than the other men, and it ain't because he don't milk dry--I sneaked after him twice. The cow just gives down for him better than for the others."

CHAPTER XXI

THE RAZORBACK

We have now launched three of the four princ.i.p.al industries of our factory farm. The fourth is perhaps the most important of all, if a single member of a group of mutually dependent industries can have this distinction. There is no question that the farmer's best friend is the hog. He will do more for him and ask less of him than any other animal.

All he asks is to be born. That is enough for this non-ruminant quadruped, who can find his living in the earth, the roadside ditch, or the forest, and who, out of a supply of gra.s.s, roots, or mast, can furnish ham and bacon to the king's taste and the poor man's maintenance. The half-wild razorback, with never a clutch of corn to his back, gives abundant food to the mountaineer over whose forest he ranges. The cropped or slit ear is the only evidence of human care or human owners.h.i.+p. He lives the life of a wild beast, and in the autumn he dies the death of a wild beast; while his flesh, made rich with juices of acorns, beechnuts, and other sweet masts, nourishes a man whose only exercise of owners.h.i.+p is slaughter. The hog that can make his own living, run like a deer, and drink out of a jug, has done more for the pioneer and the backwoodsman than any other animal.

Take this semi-wild beast away from his wild haunts, give him food and care, and he will double his gifts. Add a hundred generations of careful selection, until his form is so changed that it is beyond recognition, and again the product will be doubled. The spirit of swine is not changed by civilization or good breeding; such as it was on that day when the herd "ran down a steep place and was drowned in the sea," such it is to-day. A fixed determination to have its own way dominated the creature then, and a pig-headed desire to be the greatest food-producing machine in the world is its ruling pa.s.sion now. That the hog has succeeded in this is beyond question; for no other food animal can increase its own weight one hundred and fifty fold in the first eight months of its life.

All over the world there is a growing fondness for swine flesh, and the ever increasing supply doesn't outrun the demand. Since the dispersion of the tribes of Israel there has been no persistent effort to depopularize this wonderful food maker. Pig has more often been the food of the poor than of the rich, but now rich and poor alike do it honor.

Old Ben Jonson said:--

"Now pig is meat, and a meat that is nouris.h.i.+ng and may be desired, and consequently eaten: it may be eaten; yea, very exceedingly well eaten."

Hundreds have praised the rasher of ham, and thousands the flitch of bacon; it took the stroke of but one pen to make roast pig cla.s.sical.

The pig of to-day is so unlike his distant progenitor that he would not be recognized; if by any chance he were recognized, it would be only with a grunt of scorn for his unwieldy shape and his unenterprising spirit. Gone are the fleet legs, great head, bulky snout, terrible jaws, warlike tusks, open nostrils, flapping ears, gaunt flanks, and racing sides; and with these has gone everything that told of strength, freedom, and wild life. In their place has come a cuboidal ma.s.s, twice as long as it is broad or high, with a place in front for mouth and eyes, and a foolish-looking leg under each corner. A mighty fall from "freedom's lofty heights," but a wonderfully improved machine. The modern hog is to his progenitor as the man with the steam-hammer to the man with the stone-hammer,--infinitely more useful, though not so free.

It is not easy to overestimate the value of swine to the general farmer; but to the factory farmer they are indispensable. They furnish a profitable market for much that could not be sold, and they turn this waste material into a surprising lot of money in a marvellously short time. A pig should reach his market before he is nine months old. From the time he is new-born until he is 250 days old, he should gain at least one pound a day, which means five cents, in ordinary times.

During this time he has eaten, of things which might possibly have been sold, perhaps five dollars' worth. At 250 days, with a gain of one pound a day, he is worth, one year with another, $12.50. This is putting it too low for my market, but it gives a profit of not less than $6 a head after paying freight and commissions. It is, then, only a question of how many to keep and how to keep them. To answer the first half of this question I would say, Keep just as many as you can keep well. It never pays to keep stock on half rations of food or care, and pigs are not exceptions. In answering the other half of the question, how to keep them, I shall have to go into details of the first building of a piggery at Four Oaks.

As in the case of the hens, I determined to start clean. Hogs had been kept on the farm for years, and, so far as I could learn, there had been no epizootic disease. The swine had had free range most of the time, and the specimens which I bought were healthy and as well grown as could be expected. They were not what I wanted, either in breed or in development, so they had been disposed of, all but two. These I now consigned to the tender care of the butcher, and ordered the sty in which they had been kept to be burned.

I had planned to devote lot No. 2 to a piggery. There are five acres in this lot, and I thought it large enough to keep four or five hundred pigs of all sizes in good health and good condition for forcing. Some of the swine, not intended for market, would have more liberty; but close confinement in clean pens and small runs was to be the rule. To crowd hogs in this way, and at the same time to keep them free from disease, would require special vigilance. The ordinary diseases that come from damp and draughts could be fended off by carefully constructed buildings. Cleanliness and wholesome food ought to do much, and isolation should accomplish the rest. I have established a perfect quarantine about my hog lot, and it has never been broken. After the first invoices of swine in the winter and spring of 1896, no hog, young or old, has entered my piggery, save by the way of a sixty-day quarantine in the wood lot, and very few by that way.

My pigs are several hundred yards from the public roads, and my neighbor, Jackson, has planted a young orchard on his land to the north of my hog lots, and permits no hogs in this planting. I have thus secured practical isolation. I have rarely sent swine to fairs or stock shows. In the few instances in which I have broken this rule I have sold the stock shown, never returning it to Four Oaks.

Isolation, cleanliness, good food, good water, and a constant supply of ashes, charcoal, and salt, have kept my herd (thus far) from those dreadfully fatal diseases that destroy so many swine. If I can keep the specific micro-organism that causes hog-cholera off my place, I need not fear the disease. The same is true of swine plague. These diseases are of bacterial origin, and are communicated by the transference of bacteria from the infected to the non-infected. I propose to keep my healthy herd as far removed as possible from all sources of infection. I have carried these precautions so far that I am often scoffed at. I require my swineherd, when returning from a fair or a stock show, to take a full bath and to disinfect his clothing before stepping into the pig-house. This may seem an unnecessary refinement in precautionary measures, but I do not think so. It has served me well: no case of cholera or plague has shown itself at Four Oaks.

What would I do if disease should appear? I do not know. I think, however, that I should fight it as hard as possible at close quarters, killing the seriously ill, and burning all bodies. After the scourge had pa.s.sed I would dispose of all stock as best I could, and then burn the entire plant (fences and all), plough deep, cover the land white as snow with lime, leave it until spring, plough again, and sow to oats. During the following summer I would rebuild my plant and start afresh. A whole year would be lost, and some good buildings, but I think it would pay in the end. There would be no safety for the herd while a single colony of cholera or plague bacteria was harbored on the place; and while neither might, for years, appear in virulent form, yet there would be constant small losses and constant anxiety. One cannot afford either of these annoyances, and it is usually wise to take radical measures. If we apply sound business rules to farm management, we shall at least deserve success.

I chose to keep thoroughbred swine for the reason that all the standard varieties are reasonably certain to breed true to a type which, in each breed, is as near pork-making perfection as the widest experience can make it. Most of our good hogs are bred from English or Chinese stock.

Modifications by climate, care, crossing, and wise selection have procured a number of excellent varieties, which are distinct enough to warrant separate names, but which are nearly equal as pork-makers.

In color one could choose between black, black and white, and white and red. I wanted white swine; not because they are better than swine of other colors, for I do not think they are, but for aesthetic reasons. My poultry was to be white, and white predominated in my cows; why should not my swine be white also,--or as white as their habits would permit? I am told on all sides that the black hog is the hardiest, that it fattens easier, and that for these reasons it is a better all-round hog. This may be true, but I am content with my white ones. When some neighbor takes a better bunch of hogs to market, or gets a better price for them, than I do, I may be persuaded to think as he talks. Thus far I have sold close to the top of the market, and my hogs are never left over.

Perhaps my hogs eat more than those of my neighbors. I hope they do, for they weigh more, on a "weight for age" scale, and I do not think they are "air crammed," for "you cannot fatten capons so." I am more than satisfied with my Chester Whites. They have given me a fine profit each year, and I should be ungrateful if I did not speak them fair.

I wished to get the hog industry started on a liberal scale, and scoured the country, by letter, for the necessary animals. I found it difficult to get just what I wanted. Perhaps I wanted too much. This is what I asked for: A registered young sow due to farrow her second litter in March or April. By dint of much correspondence and a considerable outlay of money, I finally secured nineteen animals that answered the requirements. I got them in twos and threes from scattered sources, and they cost an average price of $31 per head delivered at Four Oaks. A young boar, bred in the purple, cost $27. My foundation herd of Chester Whites thus cost me $614,--too much for an economical start; but, again, I was in a hurry.

The hogs began to arrive in February, and were put into temporary quarters pending the building of the house for the brood sows, which house must now be described.