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LOOKING FORWARD 403 
members of my family do much as they pleased 
and have good things and good people around 
them, and a somewhat luxurious temperament of 
my own. 
Polly and I were too wise (not to say too old) 
to adopt farming as a means of grace through 
privations. We wanted the good there was in 
it, and nothing else; but as a secondary consid- 
eration I wished to prove that it can be made to 
pay well, even though one-third of the money 
expended goes for comforts and kickshaws. 
It is not necessary to spend so much on a five- 
hundred-acre farm, and a factory farm need not 
contain so many acres. Any number of acres 
from forty to five hundred, and any number of 
dollars from $5000 to $100,000, will do, so long 
as one holds fast to the rules: good clean fences 
for security against trespass by beasts, or weeds; 
high tilth, and heavy cropping; no waste or fal- 
low land; conscientious return to the land of 
refuse, and a cover crop turned under every 
second year; the best stock that money can buy; 
feed for product, not simply to keep the animals 
alive; force product in every way not detrimental 
to the product itself; maintain a strict quaran- 
tine around your animals, and then depend upon 
pure food, water, air, sunlight, and good shelter 
to keep them healthy ; sell as soon as the prod- 
uct is finished, even though the market doesn’t 
please you; sell only perfect product under your 
own brand; buy when the market pleases you 
