184 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



make it clearer, as well as to conceal some of the 

 facts of my life from too prying eyes, I have ut- 

 tered what I call the Medlock Dollar. This base 

 unit represents all my living expenses in the year 

 1932. Of the Medlock Dollar, thirty-one cents went 

 in 1932 to the costs of food and the farm, sixty- 

 nine to all other expenses. That was in the last 

 year before we began to produce seriously. It was 

 also need I repeat? a particularly disastrous year 

 in the business world. My income from all sources 

 was, in terms of the Medlock Dollar: forty-six 

 cents. My deficit was fifty-four cents, which was 

 met out of the granaries of the seven fat years. 



It took us four years to turn the corner (there 

 ought to be a moral or at least a gag in that some- 

 where). In 1936 our total cost of living in terms 

 of the Medlock Dollar had dropped to seventy 

 cents. By hook and crook we had hammered down 

 "other" expenses from a sixty-nine to a forty-seven- 

 cent share of the dollar. Farming and food costs 

 had dropped from thirty-one to twenty-three cents. 

 During the same time income had staged a not- 

 too-robust comeback; it had risen from forty-six to 

 sixty-two cents. The mental calculator will see at 

 a glance that this still left a deficit of eight cents 

 in every dollar. The reason I say we turned the 

 corner is that this deficit was supplied by cash in- 

 come from the farm; the actual budget was in bal- 

 ance for the first time in four years. 



