HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 279 



so much money to give to it ; and so we backed 

 down while the backing was good. 



Have we abandoned the chicken idea? We 

 have not. We got into it far enough to see 

 clearly that with an adequate investment and 

 right attention commercial poultry-raising 

 might be made to pay well, perhaps better than 

 anything else we might undertake on an equal 

 capital and with an equal use of time. Next 

 year we shall go into it again, and this time 

 we'll go to stay. With our earlier experience 

 to help us, letting us understand the strong 

 and the weak points in the proposition, we can't 

 see failure in it. 



We shall start moderately, it's true ; but our 

 start won't be made with a dozen hens and a 

 rooster. We shall contrive to skip over that 

 disheartening half-way-between year of no 

 profits. We don't want to spend another year 

 in taking care of four or five hundred hens 

 when we can see that that is a needless loss 

 of time and patience and money. We shall 

 begin next time with breeding flocks of 

 one hundred hens so we may jump over 

 the troublesome time and come at once in 

 our second year to a commercial flock of 

 1,000 or 1,200. Then we'll have something. 



