74 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



hundred and eight pounds and a half when they went out late 

 that spring-. Was not that a triumph? I did not lose one. 

 Not one in all that whole winter. I have never done that well 

 since, but as a result of that experiment I made that one winter 

 a profit of one hundred and fifteen dollars on those lambs. 

 That was enough for me. I said, " I am going into the lamb 

 business." I made one hundred and fifteen dollars, and that 

 was after I had figured all the work and all the feed, together 

 with the cost of the flock. A clear profit of one hundred and 

 fifteen dollars. Then I said, " Now I begin to see daylight. 

 Now, it is only a question of having enough lambs, and I will 

 make this thing pay." In my prosperity I kept it all to myself. 

 I did not even tell my wife. I said, '* Some day I will feed a 

 thousand lambs on that farm." I did not tell anybody of it. 

 They would have thought I was foolish. Today there are on 

 that farm a thousand lambs, and a hundred breeding ewes 

 helping me to raise that flock. They are all being fed on that 

 farm. I had to borrow money to do it. I would not advise 

 everybody to borrow money, but I did it in my case and got 

 out of it all right. I was a little astonished to hear this good 

 friend of mine, who addressed you this morning, advise you to 

 do the work yourselves. We tried that, my brother and I. I 

 called them home, just as my father did me, and my two 

 brothers are there feeding sheep today. We tried to do all the 

 work first, and then we began to hire some helpers, but we did 

 not do so until we thought we were in a position to hire some 

 additional help. We tried to keep it all for ourselves and turn 

 the results of our labor into money. We were quite successful. 

 Of course, with the increase of the business we had to increase 

 our facilities for handling the flocks. We had to make money 

 then on the farm. We had to build barns. We had to pay 

 out .a good deal of money for our sheep, and we did not always 

 pay our own money. Sometimes we had to borrow. We 

 borrowed a good deal. I do not advise any one to borrow 

 money, but I am just telling what we did. We had to borrow 

 money until the debt got pretty heavy. We had faith to be- 

 lieve, however, that it would be all right. We had faith in the 

 enterprise, for this reason : that while the debt was going up 

 all the time the prospect of final success kept growing brighter. 

 The prospect of success was beyond anything we had expected. 

 I saw that the farm was producing better. We had our fences 



