This transaction was a bargain, from my point of view; and it was a good sale, from the standpoint of the other man, for he put $12,000 away at five per cent interest, and felt that he need never do a stroke of work again. A lazy man is easily satisfied. In December I sold 283 hogs. It was a choice lot, as much alike as peas in a pod, and gave an average weight of 276 pounds; but the market was exceedingly low. I received the highest quotation for the month, $3.60 per hundred, and the lot netted $2702. It seems hard luck to be obliged to sell fine swine at such a price, and a good many farmers would hold their stock in the hope of a rise; but I do not think this prudent. When a pig is 250 days old, if he has been pushed, he has reached his greatest profit-growth; and he should be sold, even though the market be low. If one could be certain that within a reasonable time, say thirty days, there would be a marked advance, it might do to hold; but no one can be sure of this, and it doesn't usually pay to wait. Market the product when at its best, is the rule at Four Oaks. The young hog is undoubtedly at his best from eight to nine months old. He has made a maximum growth on minimum feed, and from that time on he will eat more and give smaller proportionate returns. There is danger, too, that he will grow stale; for he has been subjected to a forcing system which contemplated a definite time limit and which cannot extend much beyond that limit without risks. Force your swine not longer than nine months and sell for what you can get, and you will make more money in the long run than by trying to catch a high market. I sold in December something more than four hundred cockerels, which brought $215. The apples from the old trees were good that year, but not so abundant as the year before, and they brought $337,--$2.25 per tree. The hens laid few eggs in October and November, though they resumed work in December; but the pullets did themselves proud. Sam said he gathered from fourteen to twenty eggs a day from each pen of forty, which is better than forty per cent. We sold nearly eighteen hundred dozen eggs during this quarter, for $553. The butter account showed nearly twenty-eight hundred pounds sold, which brought $894, and the sale of eleven calves brought $180. These sales closed the credit side of our ledger for the year. Apples $337.00 Calves 130.00 Cockerels 215.00 1785 doz. eggs 553.00 2790 lb. butter 894.00 283 hogs 2702.00 -------- Total $4831.00