Making Home Profitable. Kate V. Saint Maur
is a very simple matter. A house has four sides—one for each point of the compass—so open windows and doors, and catch whatever breeze there is. Wire screens are cheap; besides, care in not allowing garbage and water to stand around the premises will mitigate flies and mosquitoes.
If fate or your fancy has settled you in a new place minus old trees to shade the lawn and porch, wire netting and wild cucumber vines, which grow very rapidly, will furnish a substitute. For keeping provisions I found a well-ventilated cellar better than the best refrigerator. We take out the windows and replace them with two thicknesses of flannel, which are thoroughly saturated with water. At noon time on a hot day evaporation lowers the temperature several degrees, yet the current of fresh air is not obstructed, as it would be with closed windows.
Well or spring water is usually refreshingly cool, so an ice house is really not imperative, though I recommend building a small one if the farm provides good ice, for it is an inexpensive building to construct, rough boards, sawdust and the ordinary handy man’s labor being the only requirements. We did not have one for several years, but then we had a spring-house with a stone floor and shelves, and a wide gutter running all around, through which the water from the spring was conducted, keeping the place almost icy.
Modern improvements are never to be found in inexpensive country houses, so we found that a bathroom or some means of taking an all-over scrub would have to be constructed immediately. We bought a full-sized tin bath tub with a wooden bottom for about seven dollars, and placed it in the little room off the kitchen. A piece of rubber hose was bound tightly to the escape pipe of the bath tub, and carried through the wall out into a box drain, thence to a barrel ten feet from the house, which had no bottom, and was sunk into the ground. From there, of course, the water seeped into the subsoil and disappeared.
We thought it was very fine indeed at first, but later, when our ideas and finances broadened, we replaced it with a porcelain enameled tub and wash bowl, with properly soldered waste pipes into a tile-drain sink three feet deep, to prevent freezing.
A pump over the kitchen sink had been the only water supply, but as that was drawn from a splendid spring several feet above the level of the house, we determined, when investing in a new bathroom outfit, to stretch the purse strings a little further, and put in hot and cold water. A waterback was attached to the kitchen stove, and a sixty-three-gallon boiler attached. It cost twenty-two dollars and seventy-five cents. The bath and basin cost thirty-eight dollars. Fifty feet of one-and-one-half-inch pipe, seven dollars and fifty cents. One hundred feet of half-inch pipe, six dollars. Waste pipe, two dollars. Labor, twenty-two dollars.
When a spring is not conveniently situated, an automatic ram and a cistern will have to be used, and I am told that they would cost about seventy dollars more. Even with the new arrangement of the bathroom, we retain the earth closet, which had been bought some time before, at a cost of twenty-five dollars. It stands with its back to the outer wall, through which a trap-door was cut, to permit the removal and replacing of pans and earth. This is undoubtedly the most inexpensive and sanitary contrivance with which a country house can be furnished.
The next comfort was a telephone, which cost only eighteen dollars a year, including local calls, long-distance calls, of course, being extra charges. That, with the rural delivery and daily paper, brings us stay-at-homes in touch with the great doings of the world and the little interests of our friends.
We deserted the city in March, but experience has taught me that the fall is the best time of the year in which to migrate. There are not so many people looking for country places; the days are bright and cool, the roads in good condition, and there is much that can be done in the garden and orchard to facilitate next spring’s work. By starting poultry in the fall, one can have broilers ready to catch the early spring prices. Moreover, it is the early chick that will make a good layer the following winter.
In the following chapter we will carry the housekeeping into the poultry yard, for that is the best starting point for a self-supporting home.
POULTRY
As poultry was the stepping stone which enabled me to reach the haven of a self-supporting home, I naturally consider it the best foundation on which a city woman can build her expectations of rural prosperity. I suppose—and I certainly hope—that every woman won’t have to begin with just two or three birds, as I did; but those who may have to, should find my first six months’ experience comforting.
Twenty-one mongrel hens were bought in three detachments, costing fifty to seventy-five cents each. They were nearly all old ladies with strongly developed maternal instincts, who delighted in sitting on eggs and brooding chickens, so we managed to rear one hundred and forty-eight chickens. We had from three to four eggs a day for the table, because we desired to keep only White Wyandotte hens in the future, and eggs for hatching were bought from a near-by farm, and cost altogether six dollars, feed for six months cost four dollars, making a total outlay of twenty dollars and fifty cents. Ninety chickens were sold as broilers, realising twenty-two dollars, so the actual cash profit was only two dollars.
But there was an increase in stock to fifty-eight pullets, all worth at least one dollar and fifty cents by the end of the sixth month. By November 22d they were all laying, the average number of eggs being twenty-five a day, when strictly new-laid eggs were bringing from thirty-five to fifty cents a dozen, a record which I think truly justifies me in recommending Biddy as the pioneer factor in economical home making. Even well-bred, industrious hens must have good conditions and care to be profitable.
There are innumerable breeds and varieties of breeds, the most popular at present being Plymouth Rocks, Barred, Buff, and White Wyandottes, Silver-Laced, White, Buff, Golden, Partridge, and Black; Rhode Island Reds, which have a plumage somewhat similar to the old-fashioned game bird, and vary only in having both rose and single combs; Minorcas, Black and White; Andalusians, about the shade of a Maltese cat, single combs; Leghorns, Black, Brown, Buff, Duck-Winged, Silver, and White.
Plymouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds are very good birds and probably the latter would be my selection, if anything could persuade me to desert White Wyandottes. The chicks of the three foregoing are all strong and easily reared, but the Wyandottes make plump broilers at a slightly earlier age, maturing perhaps a week or two earlier than the others, which are equally good roasters. I do not know that there is any material difference in their egg-producing capacities.
Leghorns, Minorcas and Andalusians are much smaller birds and are considered to be the egg machines of the hen family; but observation has convinced me that they fall far behind the three heavier breeds quoted during severely cold weather, when eggs are most valuable. Hence I always recommend Wyandottes, Rhode Island Reds or Plymouth Rocks for general utility in the vicinity of New York or further north, and the Leghorns, Minorcas and Andalusians for the Southern states, especially when eggs are the only consideration, and the birds can have free range. One of the great drawbacks to the latter birds is their ability to fly or climb over fences of almost any height, while the ’Dottes, Rocks and Reds are easily controlled in yards that are not over four feet in height.
Whichever individual fancy or environment decide you in keeping, be advised by one who has bought her experience: Don’t attempt more than one breed at a time, and shun a mixed flock of nondescripts, for it would tax the perspicacity of a Solomon to feed correctly a tribe of mongrels.
Of course, by pure-bred birds I don’t necessarily mean expensive prize winners. That would be foolish extravagance. But all large poultry plants have what are termed “market stock” for sale in the fall—the progeny of aristocrats, but lacking some necessary point for show-room honours. Such birds can be bought for about a dollar and a quarter each, and will answer every practical purpose.
Male birds need not be bought until about three weeks before the eggs are wanted for incubation. Then, if your choice should have been Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks or Rhode Island Reds, each flock of seven hens should be headed by a cockerel. Leghorns, Minorcas and Andalusians can run fifteen hens to a flock. The male bird should