ggg ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO. 



simpler accounts are, the better and more practical. I had a 

 siini)le system of my own. I did not have a complete inventory of 

 stoclv, valuation of farm, etc., but merely used a common account 

 book with a Dr. and Cr. column, in which I opened an account 

 with each crop, as corn, oats, wheat, potatoes, and hay, and 

 with the stock, as cattle, sheep, and hogs. Also, several gen- 

 eral accounts, as wages paid hired help, or, briefly, hired 

 help, where I entered sum total of wages paid each day, mis- 

 cellaneous expenses, misceUaneous work, household supplies, 

 repairs, and improvements. This is about all that is needed to 

 keep a very complete run of all your farm operations; 

 though other accounts may suggest themselves, and you can go 

 more into detail each year, as you realize its benefits. Of 

 course I kept, also, an individual account with each hired man. 



My account with a crop of sixty acres of oats, one 

 year (twenty-four hundred bushels), showed its cash cost to 

 be fifteen cents per bushel, viz: seven and one-half cents 

 wages paid the men on each bushel, four and one-half cents 

 cost of seed for each bushel, and three cents per bushel for 

 threshin"^. We sold them for thirty-two cents per bushel. I 

 never add cost of boarding help, time of team (your own), 

 wear on implements, and interest on cost of the land. All that 

 is a refinement in accounts that renders them impracticable for 

 the every day farmer, but charge the whole in general accounts 

 against the total receipts of the farm for tlie year. This gives 

 the grand result and from the general and detailed 

 accounts you can figure further at the end of the year, on 

 the investment, if you wish ; but if you keep the above 

 simple accounts, you can easily keep the run of what you are 

 doing. 



I also had a practical and easy way of my own for keep- 

 ing these accounts, the want of which is the principal reason 

 why many keep no accounts at all of farm operations. I carried 

 in a long pocket-book slips of foolscap, cut two and one-half 

 by six inches long, for my " field notes," or memorandums. 

 Each morning, at the head of one of these slips (see sample be- 

 low), T put th.e date, and A. M. for the first half of the day» 



