When to Sell Grain and Farm Produce

Grain it should be sold in the fall
Even if the price it should be small,
For if you keep it till the spring
Sometimes a less price it doth bring.

For grain with whole world doth compete,
You cannot raise the price of wheat,
Then at once you should embark it
On its way to world’s market.

We hope our views you don’t despise,
For grain doth shrink in weight and size,
If you sell wheat you can get gold,
Retain it, damp may make it mould.

Remember too that of your wheat
The rats of it will fondly eat,
Sell it and money then invest,
And you can get good interest.

The same remarks apply to cheese,
It shrinks and frosts make it to freeze,
Then careful man you have to hire
At great expense to keep up fire.

If you your produce quick do move,
The business soon it will improve,
And then mankind will you bless
For alleviating their distress.

And it pays best to sell each pig,
Plump and young, not old, fat and big,
Young and tender now’s the vogue
Either in cattle or in hog.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L28.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “When to Sell Grain and Farm Produce.” First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/when-to-sell-grain-and-farm-produce/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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