The last post (over a month ago! I will get back on track) ended with a comparison of the crop income of the farmers listed on the 1880 agricultural schedule. We noted that Peter D and Sarah’s farm produced crop income of $426, or $7.41/acre, which was right in line with the other five farms of similar size; they averaged $423 in crop income, or $7.31/acre. (The four largest farms, by contrast, averaged crop income of $1,665, or $$9.12/acre.)
One thing I accidentally overlooked in all this, both in the initial post on the agricultural schedule for the 1880 (here) census and and in the follow-up to it (here), was that the schedule actually includes a section that records the “estimated value of all farm productions (sold, consumed, or on hand) for 1879.” The extract from the schedule below shows the names of the ten farmers in this group and the value of their farm productions.
Surprisingly, the earlier estimates seem to have been reasonably accurate, as the following table shows.
| Name | Earlier Estimate | Census Report |
| Henry Griess | $1,293 | $1,208 |
| John Laurie Sr. | $2,455 | $2,400 |
| Charles Flach | $1,778 | $1,385 |
| George Fuhrer | $1,133 | $920 |
| Philip Fuhrer | $378 | $424 |
| Gerhard Dick Jr. | $251 | $221 |
| Peter Buller | $426 | $453 |
| Gerhard Dick Sr. | $399 | $351 |
| Peter Friesen | $572 | $534 |
| Henry Pankratz | $510 | $504 |
These data will prove enlightening, I believe, when we examine a similar census report from five years later, in 1885. One wonders how Peter D and Sarah’s farm had changed and what it was producing by that time.
One important fact is worth noting at this point: in August 1879 Peter D paid $900 for the 80 acres of the original farm, including the crops already in the field. By the end of the first year, that farm had produced roughly $450 in crops and other goods, that is, half of his original purchase price. I imagine that Peter D and Sarah were pleased beyond all expectations that, after spending the first years of their married life as one of the many landless couples in Molotschna, they finally owned their own farm, a farm that produced an astonishing return on their investment. Whether that early good fortune continued will be the topic of the following posts.
