'Profits Jroni Small Farms. 259 



triple purpose of ornament, shade, and fruit. Grass being the great desideratum, 

 a good farmer does not rest satisfied until he makes his fields yield at the rate of two 

 tons to the acre the first year, without much shrinkage for the next two years. 

 With this view rotation is practiced, and usually a six-year course, in the following 

 order : The first year corn is planted on sod ground, with manure in the hill ; the 

 second roots, sufficiently manured to be followed by wheat the third, and by grass 

 the three succeeding. Half the eighteen acres is thus kept in grass, three, being 

 broken up each spring, and three seeded down each fall. But, if one acre is planted 

 with (say Early Rose) potatoes, they can be harvested in season to sow the same by 

 the first of August in turnips, yielding four hundred to six hundred bushels. If the 

 farm contains twenty-three acres, another lot and another year is added, corn being 

 planted two years in succession; if twenty-six acres, grass seed is sown when the 

 corn receives its last dressing the second year ; the field is grazed one year, then 

 roots, wheat and grass follow. On a twenty-acre farm, tilled as above described, the 

 crops, well cared for, will average about as follows : Three acres of corn, 55 bushels 

 per acre, at 90 cents per bushel, $148.50 ; three acres of potatoes (or an equivalent 

 in roots), 200 hundred bushels per acre, at 65 cents per bushel, S390 ; three acres of 

 wheat, 25 bushels per acre, at 11.75 per bushel, $131.25 ; nine acres of grass, If tons 

 per acre, at $20 per ton, $300; profit on 200 hens kept for eggs, $1.50 each, $300 ; 

 on two cows, $75 each, $150 ; on orchard, %'l per tree, $300 — total 11,719.75. Out- 

 goes: for board of team, at $1 per day, S365 ; for manure purchased, $200 ; interest 

 on farm and buildings, valued at 83,000, and stock and tools, valued at $1,000, at 7 

 per cent, $280 ; taxes $20 — total $865. This deducted from $1,719.75 leaves a net 

 profit of $854.75. Add to this the profits from the garden, the bees, the pigs, etc., 

 and it will give a clear income of about $18 per week the year round. That is, the 

 judicious and industrious cultivator of a twenty-acre farm receives a salary equal to 

 that of a first-class mechanic, besides the advantages of outdoor instead of indoor 

 labor, of great variety instead of monotonous uniformity in his work, and especially 

 of being his own master, which, to a person of independent, self-reliant spirit, is of 

 no small account. It may be thought that, all the hay being reckoned at market 

 value, the profit on the cows is put too high, but the straw and corn fodder (or their 

 avails), and what turnips can be raised after a crop of early potatoes, will afford 

 abundant feed for two cows through the winter. There is no cheaper way to keep 

 cows in first-rate order than to raise turnips enough to feed one bushel per day to 

 each through the winter. On some small farms as many as five cows are kept. In 

 that case less hay is cut, and what is is chiefly fed out. Consequently more manure 

 is made and less bought. But the more cows the more work in the house, and as 

 the usual aim is to get along without outside help, the sources from which profits 

 are sought on the farm are often regulated by the state of the family in respect to 

 the relative amount of outdoor and indoor help it affords. The fact is not overlooked 

 that all small farms do not yield a profit equal to the above estimate ; while some 

 are made to exceed it, others are made only to yield a bare subsistence. But in the 

 latter case the failure can always be traced either to a soil of poorer than aver- 

 age quality, or to a lack of intelligence and aptitude for acquiring it, or a lack of 

 sound judgment, or of industry, or some similar qause. 



