VIII 



IN our six years on the farm we have sold 

 just next to nothing at all in the way of field 

 crops. Last fall, for the first time, we sent a 

 little surplus wheat to market a hundred and 

 fifty bushels; and at the same time we let a 

 neighbor have a ton of baled wheat straw be- 

 cause he needed it. That's absolutely all that's 

 gone away from our land as raw material. 

 Not a bushel of corn nor a pound of hay has 

 gone out of our gates; on the contrary, we've 

 bought corn and oats in the neighborhood, and 

 tons of bran and shorts and other milled feeds. 

 We've bought and fed these feeds to cattle 

 and hogs sometimes when a prudent farmer 

 of the old school could easily have figured that 

 we were feeding at a considerable net loss. A 

 bookkeeper could have proved it to us without 

 half trying. Nevertheless we kept it up ; and 

 if you had been watching the farm as a whole, 

 as we've watched it, I think you could be con- 

 vinced that we've come out ahead on it. 



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