The following plan of poultry keeping is, perhaps, the simplest known, and for that reason, the most successful. By “successful” I do not necessarily mean the most profitable, but the surest of paying a reasonable profit. The plan is that of using inexpensive colony houses, which are located in a large yard or small field. These houses are built very light; they are floorless, and are moved frequently, either by team or by a pole-pry. By this method the droppings are distributed directly on the soil without the usual laborious work of scraping the dropping-boards. In the poultry field some green crop is kept growing as much of the year as possible. As a general rule a crop cannot get a start in a poultry range, and so a plan of rotating the chickens in two or more fields, is desirable. No more profitable combination of “small” farming can be found than that of rotating poultry with the leafy vegetables (lettuce, spinach, cabbage, etc.) which utilize to the greatest advantage the rich, nitrogenous manure. Under this system, the hens are fed grain, chiefly corn, and beef scrap in hoppers, and water is supplied in the simplest way possible, preferably from a running brook. The chief point to be kept in mind is to cut down the number of necessary visits to the poultry houses, thus reducing the labor cost. The custom of raising chickens on fresh ground every year is of value to the farm, but the one disadvantage has always been the expense of fencing. In a recent issue the _Rural New Yorker_ told of the plan of one wide-awake chicken raiser which can be followed by anybody. His plan is to sow sunflower seed with a drill, at the earliest possible moment in the spot where you wish the fence to be; then drive stakes at intervals along the row and stretch two-foot chicken wire over them. Even the wire will confine the chicks when they are small, and by the time they have grown big enough to get over that, the sunflowers have grown up and made a “chicken-tight” combination. Hens are too stupid to think of flying over such a barrier, yet the poultry raiser can come and go as if there was no barrier. This is not only a cheap fence, but it affords the necessary shade for the fowls in hot weather. They lie about among the stalks scratching in the cool earth and getting a dirt bath at any time in the day. Then late in the season the sunflower heads are cut down and the pullets do the harvesting of that crop in short order. No other variety of fence can be used for food when its usefulness as a barrier is past. You could easily put up this sort of a fence yourself, and as the sunflower is a very hardy plant, you might even try sowing the seed in the fall, so as to get an early start in fence building in the spring.