WHAT SHALL WE ASK OF THE HEN? 109 
definite knowledge of what it costs to keep a hen, 
a hog, ora cow; nor do I care. Such data are 
greatly influenced by location, method of getting 
supplies, and market fluctuations. I furnish 
most of my food, and my own market. My 
crops have never entirely failed, and I take little 
heed whether they be large or small. They are not 
for sale as crops, but as finished products. I am 
not willing to sell them at any price, for I want 
them consumed on the place for thesake of the land. 
Corn has sold for eighty cents a bushel since I 
began this experiment, yet at that time I fed as 
much as ever and was not tempted to sell a 
bushel, though I could easily have spared five 
thousand. When it went down to twenty-eight 
cents, I did not care, for corn and oats to me are 
simply in transition state, — not commodities to 
be bought or sold. They cost me, one year with 
another, about the same. An abundant harvest 
fills my granaries to overflowing ; a bad harvest 
doesn’t deplete them, for I do not sell my surplus 
for fear that I, too, may have to buy out of a 
high market. I have bought corn and oats a few 
times, but only when the price was decidedly be- 
low my idea of the feeding value of these grains. 
I can find more than twenty-eight cents in a 
bushel of corn, and more than eighteen cents in 
thirty-two pounds of oats. But I am away off 
my subject. I began to talk about the hen plant, 
and have wandered to my favorite fad,— the 
factory farm. 
