86 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



the home-grown variety I had no idea how good 

 milk-fed veal could be. Chances are I never tasted 

 it. The same goes for home-grown beef. I was 

 doubtful about raising dairy bulls for beef al- 

 though the veterinary assured me it would pan 

 out all right: the feed a dairy critter gets makes 

 much better beef than you can buy in stores. The 

 only obvious difference between dairy- and beef- 

 breed meat is that the fat of dairy beef is yellow 

 instead of white. 



I have no idea how much it costs to produce 

 beef at home since the steers, like the sheep, must 

 be fed from the same supplies as the milch cows. 

 Like the illicit items in the swindle sheets of the 

 vanished New Era, our veal, beef, and mutton 

 are in the milk bill, but you can not see them. 

 Which reminds me to conclude these rambling 

 remarks on meat and milk with the story of a sta- 

 tistic. 



While the spread between production cost and 

 consumer price vitally concerns us all, you have no 

 conception how tiresome discussion of it can be- 

 come unless you are a practicing perfumer. In the 

 midst of an especially virulent siege of ennui I 

 worked out an elaborate comparative computation 

 of the difference in spread between the price a Bul- 

 garian peasant gets for the rose leaves that go to 

 make up a simple rose extract, and the price they 

 fetch when sold as such here in America; and that 



