In People ex rel. Watchtower Bible & Tract Socy. v. Haring (8 NY2d 350) the petitioner, a religious organization, owned an 800-acre farm in Tompkins County and used much of the food produced on the farm to feed employees at its Brooklyn headquarters and at a nearby bible school. The farm generated some surplus produce, estimated to be approximately 4 to 8% of the total, and was sold to the public at a small profit. The Court of Appeals held that the farm was reasonably incidental to the petitioner's religious purposes and that the generation of an incidental profit from the sale of surplus produce did not defeat the exemption. The following excerpt from the opinion is particularly instructive: "While an exemption in the statute is to be construed strictly against those arguing for nontaxability ... the interpretation should not be so narrow and literal as to defeat its settled purpose, which in this instance is that of encouraging, fostering and protecting religious and educational institutions. Such high and traditional purposes should not require for their attainment that religious schools plow their surplus crops back into the ground or move their farms alongside their halls of learning or their halls of learning into farming areas. "Many more cases could be cited to show a uniform trend and approach in these matters. One of them ( Temple Grove Seminary v. Cramer, 98 N Y 121) reminds us of simpler days of yore in its holding that the renting out of school buildings as a summer boarding place did not destroy exemption rights ... Nothing should turn on the fact that a small part (5% to 10%) of the farm produce was here sold as surplus (a larger proportion of the harvest was sold in Matter of New York Conference Assn. of Seventh-Day Adventists v. Nutt, 279 App. Div. 845, affd. 304 N Y 706). Historically and in reason, the only test is whether the farm operation is reasonably incident to the major purpose of its owner. There can be no doubt about that here." (Supra, at 358.)