HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 163 



that we didn't want to farm unless we felt 

 pretty sure that we could beat average farm- 

 ing. 



We had lived through some years in Ne- 

 braska that were a lot worse than the averages 

 I've written of years when the corn growers 

 got no more than twelve or fifteen cents a 

 bushel for their grain at harvest; when the 

 product of an acre would bring only three dol- 

 lars or less. Some of them sold for what they 

 could get; others let their crops rot on the 

 ground rather than fool with harvesting and 

 marketing. They made more money out of 

 their corn in the long run than those who sold. 

 There's the point I'm trying to get at. There's 

 an item in the economy of corn farming that's 

 been left out of the farmers' reckoning through 

 all the years. 



The farmers of those days and that's only 

 twenty years ago who let their corn go off 

 their farms for fifteen cents a bushel would 

 have done better if they had turned cattle into 

 their fields to eat up the crop at harvest and 

 then given the cattle away for nothing. 



Every bushel of corn that's hauled away 

 from the land that grew it takes with it fifteen 

 cents in fertility value. If you're feeding that 



