September, 1915 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
51 
from this small fruit and the local demand 
would not supply it. But with us it is 
only one of many crops, and we are satis¬ 
fied with the local market because we do 
not do the thing on a large scale. 
A trip to the railroad town is an ex¬ 
pensive matter for my next-door neighbor 
because be is running a dairy. But we 
make fairly regular trips because we are 
delivering boxes of fancy apples to the 
express office for half the year and now 
we will be delivering small fruits for many 
of the remaining months. We can add a 
bushel or five or ten of potatoes and de¬ 
liver them as ordered, because we have 
to make the trip on account of apples. 
But my dairy friend cannot. 
The result shows in the balance sheet 
of last year. The season of 1914 was a 
Waterloo for the raisers of potatoes, yet 
because of these advantages which grew 
out of other enterprises we sold ours for a 
small profit. On nearly every trip made 
with apples a few potatoes went along to 
fill a local demand, at the price charged 
by retailers. The difference between re¬ 
tail and wholesale prices this year was 
so marked that I am now buying selected, 
guaranteed seed potatoes for a few cents 
more a bushel than that at which I sold 
my own crop, admittedly affected with 
dry rot. The potato grower lost money 
this year. I was lucky enough to make it, 
because potatoes were a diversified crop 
with me that happened to fit snugly into 
the scheme of work on this place. 
The average raiser of apples lost money 
this year because he was a specialist in 
markets. We didn’t lose because we bad 
diversified in marketing. We worked 
every department very thoroughly. My 
special consumer-market responded grati- 
fyingly, the local trade absorbed its quota, 
and the bulk stuff went to a wholesale 
house that came after it. If we had 
specialized in any one market we would 
have had a sad looking balance sheet. No 
one outlet would have carried us through 
without a heavy loss. 
But our eyes are already fixed on next 
year. Our expenses will be heavier for 
both development and operation accounts, 
but our income should more than provide 
for the difference. It may increase four¬ 
fold, or it may fall below last year’s total. 
But the trend is upward and the rapid 
diversification is making for certainty. 
The hardest lesson of all to learn is to 
adjust one’s ideas to the farm income, as 
compared with that of the city. The 
banker or the professional man could not 
come to this country and get his ideas 
attuned to the conditions confronting him 
without some severe mental shocks. What 
do we know of five-thousand-dollar in¬ 
comes? What would we do with one if 
we had it? It would simply be an added 
care and responsibility and take away 
from us a certain independence which we 
now enjoy. On an income of one thousand 
dollars we can live like lords and ladies. 
A Famous Shoe-Print! 
Distributors in all 
the Principal Cities 
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