“Our experience as farmers started about fifteen years ago. I had been a sailor and was a rolling stone,” explained Mr. Fullerton. “My wife was born and raised in the heart of Brooklyn. We moved to the country because we thought the country was the best place to raise our children. We started a garden because we had so much trouble buying fresh food. What little was raised on the farms around us was shipped to New York, then brought back to our little town of Hollis, and sold to us at city prices by our village merchants. “We bought a two-acre place at Huntington, thirty-five miles from Brooklyn, and we raised all of our own vegetables, because we preferred fresh vegetables to stale ones. The potatoes we raised cost us seventeen cents a bushel, when our neighbors were paying the village grocer from one dollar and fifty cents to two dollars a bushel. Corn that cost us from eight to ten cents a dozen ears in our garden cost our neighbors thirty cents in the stores. Our two acres, worked almost entirely by my wife and an occasional helper, with what assistance I could give outside my office hours, cut down our cost of living more than half. Any family in a small town can do the same, but the city housekeeper is up against a different proposition, and we found that out when we took hold of this demonstration farm. “We were here for a definite purpose--to prove that Long Island men could raise garden stuff to market in Greater New York, and that men who bought Long Island land could run truck farms at a good profit. The first part of the proposition was easy enough. The first year we raised more than three hundred varieties of vegetables, herbs and fruits. “The second half of the proposition was not so easily solved. When we shipped out produce to the New York commission merchants, we soon found that the returns were less than the cost of the boxes in which it was shipped. “As an example, we received six or eight cents a bushel for tomatoes, the very best ripe tomatoes. The box in which we shipped them cost us fourteen cents; then came express and freight. Of course, the Long Island Railroad, which was employing us, would have franked all our produce, but that was not what Mr. Peters wanted. He wanted us to find out exactly how a farmer would handle his produce, so we paid the charges and had a record of what everything cost. “We faced this situation: With the best of tomatoes to sell, we could show no profit on them; instead, our books would show a loss. What were we to do? We did the natural thing, we went to New York to see why. At the end of three days we knew the truth. “That three-day investigation proved to us that the commission men of New York had the Standard Oil Company and the Meat Trust beaten a thousand miles. We were all paying tribute to them, big farmers and little, grocers and housewives--for you housekeepers ought to know that your greengrocer makes but a small profit on what you buy.