l88 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



ment. We have been building up a farm flock suf- 

 ficient to care for our own needs. The expense of 

 maintaining the flock has been disproportionately 

 large. But now that we have a mature flock this 

 disparity will disappear; the expense of growing 

 stock will sink back to the normal level for replace- 

 ment. There will be just as many surplus eggs to 

 sell, with less cost to produce them. At the same 

 time the incubating and brooding equipment will 

 have its load lightened: it can be used for the pro- 

 duction of other kinds of fowl, thus further con- 

 tributing to the variety of diet, and helping to 

 keep down the cost of store-bought food. Nature, 

 in short, will begin to pay compound instead of 

 simple interest. And how she can do itl 



It is impossible to contemplate my individual 

 experiment without speculating on the social and 

 economic consequences implicit in the more gen- 

 eral adoption of such a way of life. I would remind 

 you that even before the government entered on 

 a policy of destruction and restriction of crops one 

 of its own departments determined that we do not 

 produce enough of all foodstuffs to give every citi- 

 zen what government itself recommended as an 

 optimum diet, even if the citizen or the tax-payer 

 had the money to pay for it. To do this we should 

 have to put another forty-odd million acres in pro- 

 duction. Our thirty-two million rural population 

 now till an average nine acres per capita. Hence, 



