EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS 



91 



FAEM CKOPS. 



It is unfortunately true that many farmers content themselves with 

 a very meager knowledge of their own business transactions and the 

 results of their farming operations for the year and keep no books of 

 account whatever. Others are satisfied with the meager information given 

 by successive annual inventories, still others besides keeping in a book 

 their financial transactions and memoranda of bargains and executory 

 contracts made, record for each field the amount of produce grown 

 upon it and something as to the cost. We have found it impossible to 

 keep anything like an accurate account of the cost of production without 

 keeping for each employe a separate monthly time sheet showing the 

 number of hours each day expended in the different fields or for some 

 other branch of the farm business. It is an exceedingly simple and 

 easy thing to do to set down, at the close of each day's work, figures 

 under the given date indicating the number of hours spent in the differ- 

 ent occupations. At the close of the month the amount of time spent 

 upon the field is easily determined by adding together the number of 

 hours spent by the individual men and teams. 



To do comfjlete justice between the difl'erent accounts with the differ- 

 ent phases of the farm work, the live stock should be charged with the 

 food consumed and the straw used for bedding. It has been our prac- 

 tice to eliminate the latter details. Each crop is charged with the 

 time spent in hauling the manure to the fields and spreading it, the live 

 stock is not charged with the bedding nor credited with the manure. 



The following table reports the crops harvested on the several fields 

 of the College farm in the year 1897 and the cost of the labor involved 

 in their production: 



