State Agricultural Society. 329 



The garden is also a great economizer and utilizer of a farmer's time. 

 Suppose that every farmer in the State had at the present time a good 

 vegetable garden attached to his home, how many hours in the aggre- 

 gate, now wasted in idleness, would be turned to good account — and how 

 man\ r more necessaries and luxuries would be enjoyed by the families 

 throughout the agricultural districts. How many dollars, now worse 

 than wasted in bar rooms and at idle games, would be devoted to render- 

 ing our rural homes more comfortable, beautiful, and attractive. 



Again, the farmer who cultivates a garden must of necessity and by 

 his own experience learn the important fact that his success does not 

 depend so much on the number of acres cultivated, as uj^on the manner 

 of their cultivation, and not so much upon the quantity of any one crop 

 produced, as upon the excellence and variety of his crops. The almost 

 universal neglect of vegetable gardens among our farmers may be set 

 down as one of the principal causes if not the principal cause that 

 operates against a more general or universal success of the agriculturists 

 in our State. Strange as it may seem, many of our grain farmers buy 

 almost every article of food consumed in their families from one year's 

 end to another. All the beef, pork, mutton, or other meats; all the pota- 

 toes, cabbages, turnips, onions, beans, peas, tomatoes, and other vege- 

 tables; all the fruit, and even butter and cheese used in their families for 

 the year, are bought, and have to be paid for out of the proceeds of a 

 single crop of wheat and barley. Thus is kept up a constant drain upon 

 their purses, every day of the year, from the time that one crop of grain 

 is sold until it is time to sell another — and in many cases this drain 

 becomes so great that the proceeds of the grain cvoi) have to be antici- 

 pated, and debts accumulate. 



Then under such circumstances, if the crop of grain fails, what is the 

 condition of the improvident farmer? Too many have already stared 

 this condition of things in the face, and too many have been thus com- 

 pelled to reap the reward of this imperfect and reckless system of farm- 

 ing so prevalent in our State. As a counterpart to this want of farmer's 

 or kitchen gardens in the country, we find many extensive and well cul- 

 tivated gardens clustered about every city and town in the State, so 

 that our markets are as well if not better supplied with vegetables the 

 year round than an}' other country in the world. Our vegetable dealers 

 in all our towns and cities are among the most successful and prosperous 

 tradesmen in the State, and anomalous as it may appear, yet it is a fact 

 that more of the wealth of these tradesmen has been gained from the 

 profits on sales of vegetables to the farmers of the country than to resi- 

 dents of the towns and cities. 



The country peddler is an institution that may be met with the world 

 over. He generally travels from house to house among the farmers sell- 

 ing diygoods, tinware, Yankee notions, and things of a similar charac- 

 ter. In California Ave have this same indispensable institution performing 

 the same duties and supplying the same wants. But here we have also 

 a country peddler of another character — one, under the circumstances, 

 more useful and indispensable to the agricultural or grain districts than 

 the one above referred to. He is peculiarly a Californian institution. 

 He is in fact the grain farmer's portable vegetable garden. He buys his 

 vegetables of the dealers in the towns and cities and peddles them about 

 the country. As he deals in articles that everybody in the grain dis- 

 tricts wants and scarcely anybody produces, his business is a profitable 



42 



