264 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



If you prefer to begin with a berry garden and go 

 into small fruit growing, you will need for home 

 consumption, for a single family of five, about one 

 hundred plants of strawberries and one hundred of 

 raspberries. You have already learned that straw- 

 berries will bear the first year, but that the raspber- 

 ries will need a year to grow their canes which 

 never bear two years in succession. Now once more 

 multiply your plot according to the size of the busi- 

 ness you are to conduct. One acre of red raspber- 

 ries, carefully tilled and marketed, ought to bring 

 you about fifty bushels of fruit, and if sold directly 

 to your customers, you will find the ruling prices to 

 be at least fifteen cents a quart. It is a capital berry 

 to handle, only one must be up and doing with it 

 early in the morning, Sundays not excepted. 



Nature has arranged this matter of small fruit 

 ripening very nicely, so that we find one sort succeed- 

 ing another in such a way that we can do a great 

 deal of the handling by home pickers. About the 

 first of July we begin currant picking, confidently 

 expecting to net at least one hundred dollars from 

 each acre. Black raspberries accompany the cur- 

 rants and red raspberries follow immediately after, 

 and are themselves succeeded by the blackberries. 

 This is just the succession you desire, and from two 

 acres you are probably picking to the value of three 

 hundred dollars with an increase each year. These 

 gardens will improve for five or ten years and will 



