for a slower profit can be added, but spraying and cultivation of these is more liable to take spring labor.  All these fruits have the advantage of doing well in the same kind of soil recommended for chickens.  Young chickens may be grown around such berry crops and removed to permanent quarters before the berries ripen.  Strawberries would be a very poor crop because their labor falls in the chick season.

Another plan, and perhaps a better one, is to have about three fields, and rotate in such a manner that a marketable crop may be always kept growing in the third field.  Any crop may be selected, the chief labor of which falls between July and the following March.  Late cabbage and potatoes, or celery, will do if the ground is suitable for these crops.  Kale and spinach are staple fall crops.  Fall lettuce could also be grown.  If the market is glutted on such crops, they can be fed out at home.  Whenever a field is vacant, have some crop growing on it, if only for purposes of green manuring.  Never let sandy ground lie fallow.

A modification of the above plans suited to heavier ground, is to seed down the entire farm to grass.  It is then divided into three fields and provided with three sets of colony houses.  Coops are entirely dispensed with, and cheap indoor brooders are used in the permanent houses.  The pullets stay in these same houses in the same field until the moulting season of the third year, or until they are two and a half years old.  One field will always be vacant during the fall and winter season which time may be utilized for fresh seeding.

The difficulty of maintaining a sod will necessitate somewhat heavier soil than by the previous plan.  The houses should be moved around occasionally, as the grass kills out in the locality.  This plan is a lazy man’s way, taking the least labor of any method of poultry keeping known.  It is adapted to the cheaper ground in the region farthest from market.  On the Atlantic seaboard, the more enterprising man will use the third field for rotation, and sell some of the fertility of the western grain in the form of a truck crop.

Five Acre Poultry Farms.

Can a living for a family be made from a five acre poultry farm?  Yes; by individual effort, where the marketing opportunities are good; by corporate or co-operate effort, any place where the fundamental conditions are right.

This type of poultry farm is well suited for development near our large cities, where the cry of “back to the land” has filled with new hope the discouraged dweller in flat and tenement.  No greater chance for humanitarian work, and at the same time no greater business opportunity, is open to-day than that of the promotion of colonies of small poultry and truck farms where the parent colony not only sells the land, but helps the settler to establish himself in the business and to successfully market the product.  The natural location for such projects is in the sandy soils of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.