MAKING A LIVING WHERE AND HOW 3 



times weeding, three times for bugs, and digging; it would 

 pay him to go over it much oftener. 



If he plants his rows of potatoes three feet apart, to allow 

 for horse cultivation, he has 69 rows of 200 feet each ; which 

 makes him walk at least thirty-three miles over each acre. 

 If he has a twenty-acre lot in potatoes, he walks each year 

 more than 650 miles over the field and gets, let us say, 150 

 bushels of poor potatoes per acre, or 3000 bushels off his 

 twenty-acre field. 



Now suppose he cultivates the soil, instead of just "rais- 

 ing a crop," and gets 600 bushels of fine potatoes to the 

 acre, he need plant only five acres, walk only 200 miles, 

 and, because his potatoes are choice and early, get many 

 times the price that his pedestrian neighbor gets. It is much 

 easier to grow 200,000 Ib. of feed on one acre than to grow 

 them on ten acres. 



To cultivate is to watch the soil as you would watch your \ 

 cooking and to tend the crop as you would tend your annuals. ^ 

 The crop is as alive as the stock and as easily gets sick. 



If an ordinary farmer rents 60 acres at $5.00 per acre, a 

 moderate rent for good land, he pays out in cash $300, be- 

 sides farm wages. If he buys it, his interest and taxes will 

 amount to nearly as much ; but if he tills but five acres in- 

 telligently, he can get as much out of it as out of an ordinary 

 farm, and even if his rent be as high as $30 per acre for well- 

 situated land, he is $150 to the good ; besides, doing the work 

 himself, he has no drain of capital for wages. 



Large barns and shelter for help being unnecessary, he can 

 live in a cheap shack till he accumulates enough for proper 

 buildings. Many of the successful vacant lot farmers live 

 in a tent or in shanties made of old boxes and such like. 



Of course, if we have the knowledge and ability and the 



