20 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



when we come to segregate departmental farm ac- 

 counts. Consider the corn crop now in the crib. 

 Part will be used in the kitchen as corn meal. Most 

 of it will be fed to the livestock. And who shall 

 say what share of it goes to milk, beef, and veal, 

 how much into pork or poultry? To attempt such 

 refinements of bookkeeping would be to smother 

 the homestead under a mountain of paper work, 

 of which there is plenty now. And there is a still 

 better reason for abstaining from it. The aim is 

 not to limit production to those things that pay 

 on paper alone. The aim is a well-balanced diet 

 and as varied a ration as possible. Ducks offer a 

 good illustration: they are carried at a loss. They 

 are voracious feeders, grow rapidly, and having 

 once made their weight at an early age must be 

 killed or sold to avoid financial loss because they 

 keep right on feeding voraciously without adding 

 any more meat to their bones. But we are not out 

 for a money profit on ducks; what we want is a 

 change from chicken. 



Here let me warn the laymen, of whom I am 

 one, against the pitfalls of accountancy. Do not 

 let the intricacies of farm operations beguile you 

 into those deadfalls. There are as many ways to 

 skin a bookkeeper's cat as there are certified public 

 accountants. This was strikingly revealed last win- 

 ter when I undertook to figure out the profit and 

 loss on my poultry department in 1936. I calcu- 



