34:2 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



be unsalable. But B suffers no particle of ma 

 nure to remain unused, and ploughs only such land 

 as he can thoroughly enrich. He sells his poorest 

 stock and keeps only the best. He takes the best 

 agricultural periodicals, and though he may read in 

 them the most glowing accounts of distant lands at 

 low prices, yet his affections are too firmly anchored 

 in his little homestead for them to excite in him a 

 single wish to leave it. It is not the farming that 

 is unprofitable, but the management. 



This recital revives once more the often mooted 

 question of the comparative advantage of large or 

 small farms. It cannot be denied that very large 

 ones have been so managed by competent men as to 

 yield enormous profits, while annually becoming 

 more valuable. A single California farmer has har 

 vested a crop of 400,000 bushels of potatoes, while 

 a neighbor s crop amounted to 250,000 bushels. 

 Another, at Los Angeles, with a vineyard of 35 

 acres, makes 35,000 gallons of wine annually. The 

 wheat crop of that region reaches as high as 60 to 

 70 bushels per acre. The district around Sacra 

 mento is a vast wheat and barley field. Cattle re 

 quire no housing as in the Atlantic States, but keep 

 themselves the year round on the pastures. 



In that State farming seems to be the sure road to 

 fortune the larger the well-managed farm the 

 more rapid the accumulation. It will surprise 

 readers in the East to hear of the immense fruit 

 orchards in California, which so far surpass any 

 thing in the Atlantic States as to make our attempts 

 in this way seem exceedingly small. The following, 



