Part 30 (1/2)
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 ----------- 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.