THE PROBLEM, THE PEOPLE, THE PLACE 13 



If food cost us seventeen dollars a week in 

 1932, when prices reached a record low for my 

 generation, it is fair to assume the weekly aver- 

 age for the previous five years must have been at 

 least twenty-one dollars. In 1932 butter sold at 

 thirty-two cents; milk was less than eleven cents a 

 quart, eggs nineteen cents a dozen; while six cuts 

 of pork averaged less than sixteen cents a pound. 

 Prices were actually much more than twenty per 

 cent lower in 1932 than in 1928, or even 1930. 

 There were times in the five years 1927-1931 when 

 food cost us more than thirty dollars a week. But 

 rather than draw the long bow let us take twenty- 

 one dollars per week as the five-year average. In 

 the same years, that is in the years before we started 

 the experiment recounted here, the incidental ex- 

 penses of farm operation and upkeep, including 

 vegetable seeds and commercial fertilizers, plus the 

 three days' services of the hired man ran to nine- 

 teen dollars and twenty cents a week. Our total 

 budget for food and the farm was, therefore, at 

 least $40.20 per week. 



By 1935, three years after we started Medlock 

 Farm on its career of production for home-use, 

 the weekly budget had dropped to $25.62, despite 

 increased farming expense. In the first nine months 

 of 1937 the net weekly budget for all food and ex- 

 penses of farm operation was exactly $23 even 

 though the part of our budget which went for 



