What Sort of Place Do You Have - Or Want?
(Page 2 of 3)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
3) A Business in the Country: Great opportunity lies in the "rural service field." Recently, the N. Y. Times said:
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"The tremendous scope of the rural-service field is visualized by few. In the years ahead it is certain to include more frozen-food com munity locker plants, rural electrification. custom work with power machinery for farmers who prefer to hire instead of own repair shops for farm machinery, expanded telephone service, scientific soil conservation modern forestry and refrigeration. There be opportunities for roadside stand sale of products bought from farmers who live some distance from main roads.
"It seems evident that we are ready for a great expansion toward higher standards of country living. It does not mean more farmers. It does mean many more part-time country homes on the roads radiating from cities and large towns."
Next time you're riding through the country, notice the many signs along the road put up by people operating little businesses of their own. It's just as though a classified telephone directory had come to life. Most of these people, whether business or professional men, own a home with considerable land around it. Very often they have a garden, fruit, berries, chickens, other livestock.
4) A Full Time Commercial Farm: Farmers realize farming can be more than a business - it can be a way of life. A farmer who raises only tobacco is no more secure than the man who runs the corner cigar store. But the tobacco farmer, having gone through food rationing, is now apt to be keeping a cow, a couple of pigs, poultry and a large garden. The Department of Agriculture has found that the indigent farmer was the "one-crop" specialist operating on the theory of raising everything to sell and buying all his groceries, meat, milk, and vegetables, just as though he were a city dweller. Today, most farmers know that it is not cheaper to buy their family's food. In the corn belt, points out Rt. Rev. Ligutti, a year's supply of vegetables would cost approximately $260 for a family of five. In order for the corn belt farmer to earn $260 cash, he must spend 520 hours working 50 acres of land and produce 2,000 bushels of corn when corn sells at 50 cents a bushel. A vegetable garden only 50 x 100 feet, with $1.25 spent for seeds plus 50 hours of field work and 25 hours of canning will produce $312 worth of vegetables. Which is better off - the man who raises corn to buy vegetables - or the man who raises his own vegetables?
