344 FARMING BY INCHES; 



hundred dollars ; fifteen hundred of this was expended for 

 manure. Perhaps you wonder at this. Many people im- 

 agine that one dressing is sufficient for several years. This 

 is a great mistake. To compel the land to yield at the rate 

 above mentioned, fertilizers must be ploughed or harrowed 

 in every season, and in the most liberal quantities. The 

 third year, at the suggestion of the market-man, we branched 

 out and tried our hand at strawberries. We planted half an 

 acre, after pulling a crop of early cabbages. It gave us one 

 thousand boxes of berries the next year, which the market- 

 man took at twenty cents a box, and would have taken 

 more if we had only had them. After the berries were gone, 

 the plants were ploughed up in time to plant dandelions for 

 the next spring. You see we made our land give us an in- 

 come at nearly all seasons of the year. Not an inch of the 

 soil was suffered to remain idle a day, and every inch had to 

 produce all that money, labor, and skill could wring out of 

 it. Our sales the third year almost touched three thousand 

 dollars, and have remained thereabouts ever since. 



I wish I could tell you more of our doings. Want of time 

 forbids a further extension of my story. My object in giv- 

 ing you this little sketch of our agricultural experience is to 

 show you, or some one else situated as we were, a safe and 

 profitable field where you can earn both health and bread, if 

 you are so inclined. 



