BROWN FAMILY IN CALIFORNIA. 



"Yes, we started right in. Our five-room cottage of redwood cost eleven hundred 

 dollars. We got four good milch cows for fifty-five dollars apiece, and with our hogs, 

 poultry, horses, farm machinery, fixtures and improvements, the total cost outside of 

 the land, ran up to seventeen hundred and seventy dollars. Altogether, I had only 

 three hundred dollars left out of the four thousand from the sale of our New England 

 farm." 



"Right again," said Simpson, "and like a sensible man, after you had got things 

 started, you took your team and worked for somebody else. There's practically a de- 

 mand in California all the time for the fellow who can handle a farm team." 



"Yes," I said, "that helped out considerable, and while I was working out with the 

 team, Mrs. Brown borrowed your incubator, and she and Ethel hatched out two hundred 

 and forty-one chicks out of three hundred eggs and got 'em on the market for early 

 spring frys. At the same time, Paulsen came for a dollar a day and board, because his 

 partner had the team on his farm and so he couldn't use it, and he and Robert and 

 Walter got the truck garden started. Then just a little later we made an arrangement 

 with the butcher, and when he peddled his meat around the country twice a week he 

 took our eggs, poultry, butter, milk and garden truck, and sold them on commission." 



"And I, who am manager of a ranch big as some counties in the East, bought a lot 

 of your produce just because I, like a lot of other fellows on the big ranches, thought 

 I hadn't time to raise it," put in Simpson. 



"And so we began to get an income," said my wife. "A few quarters here, a few dol- 

 lars there, but at the end of the week it amounted to something and tided us over from 

 month to month." 



"You were bound to win out," said Simpson, "and of course you did, for you were 

 working along the right lines. The diversified farm, backed by alfalfa and irrigation, 

 is an economic proposition in California. Why, in the last fiscal year California im- 

 ported 7171.5 tons of butter and eggs and 4227 tons of poultry. Just think of that, pretty 

 near eight and a half million pounds of poultry alone, and this State can't be beat for 

 raising poultry." 



"And then there was the barn. All the neighbors came and helped me put it up," 

 I continued, supremely ignoring the digression of the statistically inclined Simpson. 

 "And when the barn was built, some one thought we ought all to get together and have 

 a co-operative creamery." 



"Oh, you modest Jason," chuckled Simpson, digging me in the ribs. " He doesn't 

 want the credit for the creamery idea, Mrs. Brown, but, all the same, we put the cream- 

 ery on your place." 



"Ye6, and you wouldn't take any money, but took the ground as my part." 



"That's all right," said Simpson. "The little creamery only cost thirteen hundred 

 dollars. It only took a hundred dollars from each of eight of us to start it. Why, it 

 almost paid for itself in the first six months. Now we are running on velvet." 



"Yes, we will have to enlarge. The separator only has a capacity of four hundred 

 and fifty pounds an hour. That engine has power enough to run a larger separator. 

 If I remember rightly, the separator, engine, churn, butter worker, Pasteurizer, cream 

 vats and incidentals came to seven hundred and forty-five dollars." 



"You bet, that's a dandy engine," cried my boy, Robert, who had been honored with 

 the post of official engineer and gloried in his engineer's cap and blue jeans. 



"Me and Walter, when the creamery ain't running, saw up a lot of eucalyptus Into 

 stove lengths for fire-wood. 



"Jason, you have omitted something," said my wife. 



"Ah, yes, our little prize heifer. She Isn't so little, though, for she's a Holsteln. 

 She's a wonderful milk giver, and If everything goes well she's the nucleus of a herd 

 of fine-bred stock." 



"And the aggregate results of the year?" suggested Simpson. 



"Well, we haven't made a fortune; but we have been comfortable and never once 

 In debt," I said. "I figure that the total proceeds of the farm, with our work on It and 

 my work outside, have brought in about eighteen hundred dollars. This is not net, 

 though. We must deduct from It wages of help, and such living expenses as had to 

 be made In buying things we don't raise. Next year we're going to raise pretty nearly 

 all our own food. Still we have several hundred dollars In the bank, and I figure that 

 the farm is worth a great deal more than when I bought it." 



"Well, you've done well, Indeed, Jason," said Simpson, as he and Mrs. Simpson rose 



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