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 below 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.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHITE WYANDOTTES

"Sam," said I, "I am going to start this poultry plant from just as near
the beginning of things as possible. I want you to dispose of every hen
on the place within the next twenty days, and to burn everything that
has been used in connection with them. We've cleared this land of
disease germs, if there were germs in it, by turning it bottom-side up;
now let's start free from the pestiferous vermin that make a hen's life
unhappy. No stock, either old or young, shall be brought here. When we
want to change our breeding, we'll buy eggs from the best fanciers and
hatch them in our own incubators. It will then be our own fault if we
don't keep our chickens comfortable and free from their enemies. This is
sound theory, and we'll try how it works out in practice. Certainly it
will be easier to keep clean if we start clean. Not one board or piece
of lumber that has been used for any other purpose shall find place in
my hen-houses. Eternal vigilance makes a full egg basket; and a full egg
basket means a lot of money at the year's end. I will never find fault
with you for being too careful Attend to the details in such way as
suits you best, provided the result is thorough and everlasting
cleanliness. Nothing less will win out, and nothing less will meet the
requirements of our factory rules.

"The first thing to do is to get the incubating cellar made. It ought to
be four feet in the ground and four feet out of it. Make it ten feet by
fifteen, inside measure, and you can easily run five two-hundred-egg
incubators. Build it near the south fence in No. 4,--that's the lot for
the hens. The walls are to be of brick, and we'll have a brick floor put
in, for it's too cold to concrete it now. Gables are