HOIV TO KEEP FARM ACCOUNTS. 



over which you have no control, and that the details are so many 

 if you would have them accurate, that it is altogether best not to 

 attempt it. It is true, you have seen every now and then in the 

 agricultural press, articles regarding the cost of producing a 

 pound of pork, beef or mutton, and what it costs to grow the dif- 

 ferent grains and grasses. Now, however useful the exact cost 

 may be, the farmer or stockman who would attempt to keep such 

 an account with each crop, and the different kinds of live-stock he 

 would raise, will find it all but an impossible task. Manufactur- 

 ers who deal only with dead things can easily keep exact cost 

 accounts, but living and growing things possess an individuality 

 that varies with the season, with the feeder, and depend on con- 

 ditions which do not admit of hard and fast rules. Recently in 

 The Breeder's Gazette, the author of a standard work on "Feed- 

 ing" had this to say concerning it: "Feeding has been frequently 

 referred to as a science but it is far from being an exact science. 

 It is still in the empirical state of experimentaion. No other voca- 

 tion of man more thoroughly illustrates the aphorism that a little 

 learning is a dangerous thing. As the result of a single experi- 

 ment we find formulas laid down with all the dictum of authority, 

 and the great army of feeders commanded to "about face," and the 

 very next experiment under similar conditions gives opposite re- 

 sults. Do you know that after fifteen years, during which the 

 Government has expended $225,000 as a minimum, it is impossible 

 to tell the cost in corn of a pound of pork? "The more I learn 

 the more I know I don't knoM'." 



For practical purposes, a "Production" account showing the 

 gross sales less the items which go to make up the general expense 

 of the farmstead as shown by the Loss and Gain account in the 

 illustration herein (Plates 90 and 91) will be all that is needed. 

 Much more satisfaction and real benefit will be found in a simple 

 set of accounts accurately kept, than to attemp one burdensome 

 with detail, and then at the end of the year find it to be of no value 

 whatever. Far better to keep an account with the farmstead as 

 a whole than to begin the detail of departmental accounting. The 

 one is perfectly reasonable, and requires but little time. The other 

 impractical and impossible to all but the very, very few on the 

 average farm. 23 



