l68 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



There is not only no doubt, but there is every 

 indication that with a little better, more systematic 

 attention to this phase of home-farming we could 

 make what is called "a good thing" of it. Last 

 summer my daughters found themselves short of 

 money for their vacation. I offered them all the 

 receipts from all the sales they could make to 

 new customers, with the proviso that these were 

 not to be served at the expense of regular trade. 

 It is true that in some departments of the truck 

 garden they created critical shortages; on the other 

 hand they got rid of a lot of stuff that would other- 

 wise have been but pork and poultry salvage. 

 And in less than two weeks, having dug up five 

 new customers, they did over twenty dollars' worth 

 of business. 



Conversely, on another occasion when we were 

 all otherwise too preoccupied to pay any attention 

 to sales, they fell off alarmingly. Like everything 

 else you have to work at it. An intimate, up-to-the- 

 minute knowledge of what is growing on the farm 

 is absolutely necessary. And one must tell the cus- 

 tomers not only what is ready, but what to antici- 

 pate. Otherwise, for example, they are apt to in- 

 dulge in an orgy of store-boughten broccoli the 

 very week before ours is ripe, and then never want 

 to see it again. 



There was a time when farming was a race to 

 get to market first with seasonal products and col- 



