PLAN No. 790. BACK LOT MONEY

Millions of dollars are lost by people in cities not using their back yards for poultry. There are thousands of acres of idle land that could be made to return a dividend. The thrifty Japs make every foot of soil produce. They farm mountains and hills that Americans would not touch. The Americans are wasteful, but since food has become so high they see that the land is the source of the bread of life, and we find many using their back yards for gardens or poultry.

Many raise a garden, and when fall comes buy pullets and keep them for winter eggs, selling the pullets in the spring, thus raising two crops off the same ground. By right methods, poultry and eggs are easily produced in back yards at a good profit. The day is coming when not only vacant town lots, but all back yards will be producing something of value. In some cities many have a few chickens on the roof.

Candy and Chickens

A man who conducts a candy kitchen in a large city has 400 hens in a building back of his store. These hens are kept in this building on both the first and second floors. He devotes two hours daily to this flock and they bring him in an income of $1,000 a year. The egg yield is due to comfortable quarters and a special system of feeding. He gets much feed at a low cost in this large city. He buys stale bread and skim-milk from creameries at reduced prices. He buys lawn clippings from the town boys at 5 cents per bushel. When the days are short he turns the electric lights on. He says the hens have to have a long day in which to work to turn out a good egg yield. He gets his highest prices for eggs during the winter, and it is at this time that he makes the most money from his hens. He has the White Leghorns. No roosters are kept among the flock to annoy the people by their early crowing.

Opportunity knocked at this man’s door and he heard. Opportunity is where you find it. Axiom has it that once, at least, opportunity knocks at every door, but for every time it knocks to make itself known, a hundred times it lies unobserved, while you pass unknowing. I wonder if any of you have heard Russel Conwell’s great lecture, “Acres of Diamonds.” If you have, you will always be the better for it, for therein he shows how we overlook our present opportunities for the things just a little farther off.

Get a Hobby

We need to open our ears for the jingle of coin which is in our back yards. Every man and every woman should have a hobby as a kind of recreation, occupation, something to enthuse over. Anyone with time hanging heavy on his hands is a misery to himself and a nuisance to other folks, and the best medicine for the disorder is a hobby. A hobby lends itself to the means of all, for just a few dollars invested by the humble amateur or as many hundreds by the wealthy man. You may not have an “acre of diamonds” as per Russel Conwell, but you have a small gold mine which you may work, right in your own back yards, if you want to.