KEEPING ONE COW. 59 



wiMi us, did we, children? " " No, indeed, only when we went to 

 grand-pa's." " Look at this baby," said Mary, "she never was 

 so well before, and she is getting as rosy and round as a Maiden- 

 blush apple. You can't think what a help the rnilk is to nft in 

 cooking. I can always have something fresh and nice now, and it 

 will lessen our meat bill too." 



Some of the neighbors wanted to buy milk ; "Comfort" was giving 

 sixteen quarts a day. So four neighboring families were supplied 

 each with one quart' of milk a day, and after a week's trial Mary 

 reported she had made five pounds of butter that was worth twenty 

 cents per pound, grocery price. They had sold twenty eight 

 quarts of milk at six cents a quart, butter and milk amounting to 

 two dollars and sixty-eight cents, and they had used all the 

 sweet milk, cream, sour milk and butter-milk they needed, 

 and the pig had been kept on the surplus of the last two. 

 Joseph was now feeding "Comfort" as Mr. Mason advised, 

 with corn meal and bran, two-thirds of the former and 

 one-third of the latter by weight, giving three quarts of the 

 mixture night and morning. Corn meal cost one cent per 

 pound, bran cost two-thirds of a cent a pound, the cost of the feed 

 per day being a fraction over seven cents. He also gave her a lit- 

 tle hay to the value of say ten cents a week pasture cost twenty- 

 five cents a week, so the expense of her keeping was eighty-five 

 cents a week, the work offsetting the milk used, left a profit of one 

 dollar and eighty-three cents. There was another item not to be 

 overlooked. The manure that was accumulating, the value of 

 which was largely increased by the ground feed given the cow, 

 and the oat shuck bedding. Of the acre of land about one- 

 quarter was occupied with buildings, walks, shrubbery, a small 

 lawn in front, and flower garden at the side of the house, 

 but every foot of intervening space was well seeded to grass, so 

 it really made quite a little mowing. Another quarter had been 

 set out to fruit trees five years, and was now well stocked with 

 red clover, the remaining one-half acre had been used as a garden 

 and potato patch. With the exception of a few loads of manure, 

 obtained at different places, no fertilizer had been used on this 

 acre of land. But now having gone into the stock business, Jo- 

 ' seph began to read and think about such things. He frequently 

 brought home an agricultural paper from Mr. Mason's to read in 

 the evening, and began also to feel he must have one of his own. 

 He found considerable in the papers about commercial fertilizers, 

 so he asked Mr. Mason if he had ever used any of them. He 

 said he had experimented with them considerably, and thought 



