Prosperity Far Distant by Charles M. Wiltse

Author:Charles M. Wiltse
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780821444092
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2012-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Kittens feeding

There have been more pig troubles, too, and Dad has covered himself with glory as a result, achieving some local reputation at the same time. For the remainder of the C—s’ herd, five in all, took to rooting in our pasture about the time I departed. It did not take them long to damage the place so seriously that it must all be reseeded; and remonstrance having no more effect than heretofore, Dad went out with the gun. His marksmanship must have improved since the day we practiced on a tree. At any rate, he killed two of the beasts, and the next day the other three were sold to George. The dead ones are still lying in the pasture where they fell, although both could have been saved for meat. The day was freezing, and the owners were informed before the pigs were cold. We shall eventually have to bury them, I suppose.

It was a day or two after I left that eggs dropped to fifteen cents, rising to eighteen again with the cold spell. After the first of this month they fell back to seventeen, but were up a cent again yesterday. It seems that one of the relief groups near here has set out to buy a huge quantity of fresh eggs, which is serving to boost the market within a considerable radius. At the present moment eggs are a trifle higher here than they were a year ago, although still much too low. Our production has been consistently over a hundred a day until yesterday when we slumped to ninety-one.

The only other event of importance of which I have been told is the death of a pullet. She had been fighting, and having lost considerable blood, was put into the brooder-house for treatment. In her weakened condition, she froze to death. In the main house the temperature is raised by the heat from the chickens’ own bodies.

Friday, January 12

lxxxii

Cold, with a heavy frost. The narrow yellow-brown strip of road stands out, hard and barren, between soft, greenish-white fields on either side. The crisp air is still, and even here in the house I can catch the insistent singing of the chickens.

Yesterday I heard another instance of the effect of the new farm legislation. D—took some corn to the mill, an old one-man mill in a neighboring township, to have it ground, as he had been doing for years; following the ancient practice of giving a percentage to the miller instead of cash, but the miller refused to grind for him. He says he can no longer afford to do it, because of the new regulations, which require him to keep a record of every bushel ground, pay a processing tax on it in cash, record the fees, etc. The additional bookkeeping more than swallows up the profit on small transactions. In the end, D— had to take his grain to the big mill in town, paying the extra cost of the haul and the tax.

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