l82 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



living rises, the cost of living on this particular 

 farm goes up too with no compensatory return: 

 either that family's living expenses must increase 

 or, if they are maintained in statu quo there must 

 be a less bountiful provision. Whereas it matters 

 little on Medlock Farm whether the cost of living 

 goes up or down it is not so much the market 

 price of a dozen ears of corn that concerns us as 

 that we have our own corn on the cob. No matter 

 how low it goes it will still be cheaper to grow 

 it than to buy it. Yet if the cost of producing rises 

 the increase will be more than offset by the in- 

 creased price we will receive for what we sell: a 

 rising market rather favors the home-use farm. For 

 while farm prices are usually slowest to "improve" 

 as it is ironically called retail food prices are the 

 most sensitive in the whole economic structure. 



It is interesting in this connection to trace the 

 price fluctuations of pork at retail, compared to 

 the price of middlings, the biggest factor in pork 

 production. In the dark winter of 1933 the aver- 

 age retail price per pound of all the products we 

 got from a pig was .118 cents. At the perihelion of 

 planned production, the winter of 1936-37, this av- 

 erage had risen to .322 cents per pound. Now in 

 the winter of the New Deal's discontent 1937-38, 

 the Medlock pork index has dropped to .221. 

 Which goes to show there is something prepos- 

 terous somewhere in the American system. For ob- 



