HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 99 



amounted to only a few cents over $100. That 

 had gone for coffee and sugar and flour and 

 the few things we couldn't grow for ourselves. 

 Surplus sold from garden and dairy and poul- 

 try yards, now a little and then a little, had 

 more than offset the sum spent for these sta- 

 ples. The difference paid the cost of our 

 gardening. Poultry and cows were paying for 

 their "keep" in the increase of flocks and herd 

 and in the value of manure that went out, care- 

 fully husbanded, to our fields and orchard and 

 garden. The supplies that went upon our 

 table from all these sources stood as profit 

 earned and paid. I'm not talking figuratively 

 when I say that our farm was already saving 

 us $600 a year as compared with the cost of 

 living as we'd known it in town. We'll get to 

 a closer analysis of some of these figures by 

 and by; I'm just lumping them now. 



To put it another way, we had to use in that 

 year only $100 in money in the business of 

 feeding the family, to effect exchanges that 

 couldn't conveniently be made directly. That 

 narrow margin deceived some of our friends 

 who weren't used to our way of doing things. 

 I had done some talking in the earlier months 

 One of the bankers of Fayetteville, with whom 



