444 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



Let us hope that practical farmers will more and more carry their 

 improvements into their homes, and learn that of all things they cultivate 

 they are themselves most susceptible of cultivation. 



Discussion on Farm Book-keeping. 



Mr. W. Pierce urged a system of book-keeping by which the farmer may 

 know just what each article costs. Prof. Carpenter asked how to keep such 

 a system of books. Has made the effort, but has been unable to succeed. 

 The farm costs so much and brings in so much, and that is all he knows 

 about it. L. D. Watkins has also made the attempt ; purchased a farmers' 

 account book and set out in good faith, but failed. There are so many 

 obstacles in the way he believes it impossible. 



H. G. Eeynolds : It is easy to say that the farmer ought to know to a 

 cent what his crops cost him, but it is an extremely complicated thing to 

 get at, particularly in farming on a small scale and on the plan of mixed 

 husbandry, where the labor is largely performed by the farmer himself, his 

 wife and his children, and where so large a proportion of the labor partakes 

 of the character of chores. What is the cost of a pig fed on the house swill 

 and cared for by children's choring? Do you say the cost is nothing? That 

 is an easy answer, but it is not book-keeping. But a book-keeping answer 

 to that question, of sufficient accuracy to be of any value, is almost an 

 impossibility; and in the style of farming of which I speak, which is the 

 style of most of the farming throughout the country, there is so large an 

 element of these things which cannot be reduced to figures that the would-be 

 keeper of farm accounts soon finds himself driven to omitting a good many 

 things and guessing at a good many others. 



Take that prime element in the cost of producing any farm crop — the 

 manure. Unless you buy it of some one else at so much per ton, load or 

 cord, what is left for you but to guess at its cost, or to estimate its value at 

 what you or some one else once paid for it somewhere else? Why not as 

 well guess at the cost or value of your finished crop at once and be done 

 with it? or why not simply say that on some other farm, or at some other 

 time, such a crop sold for so much, or was reckoned to have cost so much, 

 and therefore you will take that figure for your present case? 



That is also easy, but it is not finding out the cost of your crops by book- 

 keeping. 



A. Hitchcock : I have tried to keep books in farming, and found that 

 there was inevitably too much of estimating to make the book-keeping of 

 value. Manure lasts beyond the first crop, but in what proportion no man 

 can tell. 



T. B. Halliday: I have found the greatest difficulty in accounts in esti- 

 mating the proportion of manure used by succeeding crops. I have little 

 trouble to determine nearly the cost of the labor applied to field crops, and 

 find my accounts a source of satisfaction if not of profit. 



Mr. Holmes : Mr. Pierce's idea seems to me impracticable, because of the 

 variability of prices to be obtained. 



Mr. : What proportion of manure would Mr. Halliday charge to 



a crop? 



