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Ten Acres Enough 



(Continued jrom page 27, February, 1913) 



Quality in the Peach Trees 



IT WOULD be a most erroneous conclusion for 

 the reader to suppose that all this long-continued 

 labor in keeping the ground clear of weeds was so 

 much labor thrown away. On the contrary, even 

 apart from ridding the soil of so many nuisances, 

 it kept the land in the most admirable condition. 

 Everything I had planted grew with surprising lux- 

 uriance. I do think it was an illustration of the 

 value of thorough culture, made so manifest that 

 no one could fail to observe it. It abundantly 

 repaid me for all my watchfulness and care. 



My nurseryman came along at the end of the 

 season, to see how I had fared, and walked de- 

 liberately over the ground with me, examining 

 the peach trees. He said he had never seen 

 young trees grow more vigorously. Not one of 

 them had died. The raspberries had not grown 

 so much as he expected, but the strawberry- 

 rows were now filled with plants. As runners 

 were thrown out, I had carefully trained them 

 in line with the parent stools, not permitting 

 them to sprawl right and left over a great sur- 

 face, forming a mass that could not be weeded, 

 even by hand. This he did not approve of. He 

 said by letting them spread out right and left the 

 crop of fruit would be much greater, but ad- 

 mitted that the size of the berries would be much 

 smaller. But he contended that quantity was 

 what the public wanted, and that they did not 

 care so much for quality. Yet he could not ex- 

 plain the damaging fact that the largest sized 

 fruit was always the most eagerly sought after, 

 and invariably commanded the highest price. 

 Though he did not approve of my mode of culti- 

 vation, yet he could not convince me that I had 

 made a mistake. 



Profits in Berries 



FROM these we walked over to the blackberries. 

 They, too, had grown finely under my thorough 

 culture of the ground. Besides sending up good 

 canes which promised a fair crop the next season, 

 each root had sent up several suckers, some of them 

 several feet away, and out of the line of the row. 

 The interest in the Lawton berry had rapidly ex- 

 tended all round among my neighbors, and I very 

 soon discovered that my nurseryman wanted to buy. 



He offered to give me a receipt for the $120 he 

 was to receive out of the strawberries he had sold 

 me, and pay me $100 down, for a thousand black- 

 berry plants. Though I felt pretty sure I could 

 do better, yet I closed with him. He afterward 

 retailed the plants for a much larger sum. 



I may add that these blackberry roots came into 

 more active demand from that time until the next 

 spring; and when spring opened, more suckers 

 came up, which, with my previous stock, amounted 

 to a large number. A seedsman in the city adver- 

 tised them for sale, and took retail orders for me. 

 His sales, with my own, absorbed every root I 

 could spare. When they had all been disposed of, 

 and my receipts were footed up, I found that they 

 amounted to $460, leaving me $340, after paying 

 for my strawberry plants. This was far better 

 than I had anticipated. 



Pigs Success; Chickens Failure! 



VERY early after taking possession, I invested 

 twelve dollars in the purchase of seven pigs 

 of ordinary country breed. When October came 

 around we had six of them left, the seventh having 

 died. They were estimated to weigh at least 

 150 pounds each, and were in prime condition for 



'Copyright, 1905 by Consolidated Retail Booksellers 



fattening. By the 10th of December they were 

 ready for the butcher, and on being killed were 

 found to average 224 pounds, or 944 pounds in all. 

 We sold what we did not need and realized $49.00. 



Hogs fatten most rapidly in an atmosphere 

 neither too hot nor too cold; hence, the months of 

 September, October and November are the best for 

 making pork. Be sure to get a breed of pig that is 

 well formed, has an aptitude for taking on fat 

 readily, and consumes the least food. The Suf- 

 folks come to maturity earliest, and probably are 

 the most profitable to kill at from seven to ten 

 months; but some people prefer the Berkshires. 

 The pork of both is excellent; they will usually 

 weigh from 250 to 300 pounds at the age of eight 

 or ten months. 



As no farm is pronounced complete without 

 poultry, and as both my wife and daughters were 

 especially fond of looking after chickens — at least, 

 they thought they would be — I invested $7 in 

 the purchase of a cock and ten hens, warranted to 

 be powerful layers. The hens came home and were 

 put into a cage in the barnyard to familiarize them 

 with their new home. They did not lay so freely 

 as had been expected — in fact, some did not lay 

 at all and as soon as let out of their cage, they got 

 over the fence into the garden. They made havoc 

 among the young flowers and vegetables, and tore 

 up the beds which had been so nicely raked. They 

 were marched back into the cage. It happened to 

 be too small for so many fowls and they were soon 

 swarming with lice. We clipped their wings, 

 saturated their heads with lamp oil, provided an 

 abundance of ashes for them to roll in, and then 

 turned them loose in the barnyard. The treat- 

 ment was effective. 



I think this little accident, however, took away 

 from my wife all the romance of keeping chickens. 

 I afterward rarely heard her mention eggs, and she 

 was careful never to purchase chickens with the 

 feathers on! 



An Acre in Tomatoes 



I HAD one acre in tomatoes, for which the soil of 

 New Jersey is perhaps without a rival. The 

 plants are started in hotbeds, where they flourish un- 

 til all danger from frost disappears, when they are set 

 out in the open air, with a generous shovelful of 

 .well-rotted stable manure deposited under each 

 plant. A moist day is preferred for this operation. 

 The oftener tomatoes are transplanted the quicker 

 they are to mature; and as the great effort among 

 growers is to be first in market, so some of them 

 take pains to transplant twice. Not owning a hot 

 bed I was forced to buy my tomato plants. 



For the first few baskets of early tomatoes I sent 

 to market I obtained two dollars per basket of three 

 pecks each. The price rapidly diminished as the 

 supply increased until, it fell to twenty-five cents 

 a bushel, and even less. However, as the season 

 advanced and the supply diminished, the price 

 again rose to a dollar a basket, the demand con- 

 tinuing as long as any could be procured. 



My single acre of tomatoes produced for me a 

 clear profit of $120, quite as much as I had antici- 

 pated. I am aware that others have realized more 



257 



than double this amount, but they were exper- 

 ienced hands at the business. 



From all the remainder of the three acres but 

 little money was produced. It gave me parsnips, 

 turnips, and pumpkins. Between the rows of 

 sweet corn a fine crop of cabbages was raised, of 

 which my sales amounted to $82. I admit that a 

 few of my vegetables did not yield as large a crop 

 as some of my neighbors, but on the other hand, I 

 had gone far ahead of them in the growth of my 

 standard fruits; and the evident hit I had made with 

 the new blackberry had the effect of impressing 

 them with considerable respect for my courage and 

 sagacity. 



Close of My First Year — its Loss and Gain 



IT WAS now the dead of winter and the end of my 

 first year of farming. Having been all my life 

 accustomed to accounts, I found no difficulty at 

 the year's end in ascertaining to a dollar whether 

 my first season's experience had been one of loss or 

 gain. I give the particulars in full: 



Cost of stable manure and ashes . . . ... $248 



Plaster and guano, not all used 20 



Plowing, harrowing, and digging up the garden . . 30 



Cabbage and tomato plants 30 



Loss on my first cow .7 



Garden seeds 8 



Cost of six pigs 12 



Corn-meal and bran 28 



Wages of assistant for six months 72 



$455 



Here was an outlay which was likely to occur 

 every year, except the two items of loss on the cow 

 and the cost of buying cabbages and tomato plants, 

 which have subsequently been raised in a hotbed 

 at home. The great item is in manure, amounting 

 to $268 and this must be kept at the same figure, if 

 not increased unless an equal quantity can, by 

 some process, be manufactured at home. 



Then there was the foUowing permanent outlay 

 made in stocking the farm with fruit: 



Strawberries for six acres $120.00 



Raspberries for two acres 34 00 



804 peach trees, and planting them . . . 72.36 



$226.36 



This constituted a permanent investment of 

 capital, and would not have to be repeated, so that 

 the actual cost the first year was, as stated, $455. 

 My own time and labor are not charged, because 

 that item is adjusted in the grand result of whether 

 the farm supported me or not. There was also 

 the cost of horse and cow, plows, and other tools; 

 but these, too, were investments, not expenses. 

 So, also, with the large item of $226.35, invested in 

 standard fruits. 



It is fair, therefore, to charge the current ex- 

 penses only against the current receipts. The latter 

 were as follows: 



Sales of blackberry plants $460 



Sales of cabbages 82 



Sales of tomatoes 120 



Sales of garden products 80 



Sales of pork 49 



$791 

 4SS 



Current expenses, as stated 



Profit $336 



This was about $1.25 per day for the 265 days 

 we had been in the country, from April 1st to 

 January 1st, and when added to our copious 

 supplies of vegetables, fruits, pork and milk, it kept 

 the family in abundance. I proved this by a very 

 simple formula. I knew exactly how much cash I 

 had on hand when I began in April, and from that 

 amount deducted the cost of all my permanent 

 investments in standard fruits, stocks, and imple- 

 ments, and found that the remainder came within 

 a few cents of the balance on hand in January. I 



