Published  by 
The  Rural  Publishing  Co. 
333  W.  30th  Street 
New  York 
Weekly,  One  Dollar  Per  Year 
Postpaid 
The  Business  Farmer’s  Paper 
Single  Copies,  Five  Cents 
Voi..  I.XXV. 
NEW  YORK,  APRIL  22.  191G. 
No.  4374. 
A 
One  Acre — One  Man’s  Job 
A  Massachusetts  Garden  Orchard 
POULTRY  GARDENER. — In  acquiring  a  sin¬ 
gle  acre  within  the  settled  limits  of  a  New  Eng¬ 
land  manufacturing  village  it  was  with  the  definite 
purpose  of  being  my  own  boss  in  a  degree,  rare  in 
these  days  when  the  problem  of  hired  help  is  a 
most  perplexing  one.  This  project  is  not  so  con¬ 
jectural  as  it  might  well  lie  were  I  wholly  unfam¬ 
iliar  with  my  work:  as  when  one  goes  mi t  from  the 
city  to  cope  with  farming.  The  particular  branch 
of  husbandry  I  am  engaged  in  may  better  be  de¬ 
scribed  as  poultry  gardening.  It  is  now  some  30 
years  since  I  first  began  telling  R.  N\- Y.  readers  of 
that  day  how  I  grew  chickens  and  garden  upon  the 
same  ground  together.  Before  getting  down  to  my 
subject  I  will  say  a  word  about  my  location.  If  I 
should  use  the  expression  “historic”  New  England 
THE  RETURN  OF  THE  NATIVE.— New  England 
is  a  region  to  which  Westerners  are  turning  their 
eyes.  There  is  that  about  this  country,  with  all  its 
agricultural  drawbacks,  which  appeals  to  sentiment. 
The  lure  of  the  Golden  West  was  well  enough,  and 
now  those  who  were  lured,  or  perhaps  their  off¬ 
spring.  are  experiencing  the  lure  of  the  beautiful 
East.  Not  only  returning  to  settle  down  to  enjoy 
life,  hut  some  are  returning  from  the  more  fertile 
country  to  take  up  neglected  farms,  content  to  cut 
a  narrowed  swath  for  sake  of  the  handier  market. 
Ami  so  in  my  own  ease,  having  lived  West  and 
South,  the  old-home  lure  was  ever  present. 
FLUCTUATING  VALUES.— New  England's  man¬ 
ufacturing  interests  have  their  ebb  and  flow,  and 
real  estate  may  fluctuate  like  values  in  a  mining 
country.  In  this  town  of  my  adoption  the  biggest 
shoe  factory  in  the  world  (and  there  were  several 
such  according  to  reports)  some  years  ago  perman- 
were  consumed  in  plowing  and  harrowing.  I  plant¬ 
ed  it  to  White  Evergreen  sweet  corn,  for  very  late 
marketing,  as  my  Summer  work  interfered  with  gar¬ 
dening  at  that  time.  Being  located  much  above  most 
surrounding  lands  my  acre  escapes  the  early  frosts; 
and  the  townspeople  marvelled  at  the  unaccustomed 
size  and  fineness  of  the  crop  supplied  them  for  weeks 
after  sweet  corn  is  generally  out  of  season. 
SWEET  CORN. — In  the  Spring  of  15)14,  as  I  con¬ 
templated  growing  asparagus,  I  planted  as  a  seed 
bed  for  Ibis  crop  a  single  row,  running  full  length 
of  the  piece.  The  remainder  was  put  to  sweet  corn 
of  four  varieties.  Carpenter’s  Golden  proved  of  high 
quality,  but  I  did  not  favor  its  habit  of  growth. 
For  a  crop  with  chickens  among  it.  a  tall  growing 
variety  is  wanted.  Carpenter’s  lacks  on  this  point 
and  its  ears  hang  out  away  from  the  stalk  and  are 
unnecessarily  long.  Seymour's  Sweet  Orange  is  too 
hard  in  kernels  at  any  age  to  rank  with  the  best. 
The  Line-up  in  a  Strawberry  Field.  Fig.  243 
it  would  be  well  chosen,  for  much  industrial  his¬ 
tory  has  been  made  immediately  about  me.  Within 
live  miles  Elias  Howe  built  the  first  sewing  machine 
and  a  brother  planned  the  first  truss  bridge. 
A  NEW  ENGLAND  INVENTION.— Rut  the  most 
eventful  happening  was  not  so  far  away,  where  a 
poor  young  mechanic  of  Huguenot  birth,  between 
times  of  lighting  redskins,  solved  the  problem  of 
turning  irregular  forms;  and  his  machine  for  exact¬ 
ly  repeating  any  model,  as  a  gun-stock,  a  last,  or  an 
ax-helve,  created  a  greater  industrial  revolution 
than  did  ever  any  other  single  invention.  And  yet, 
by  the  irony  of  fate,  his  name  is  unhonored  and  un¬ 
sung,  and  if  today  you  ask  the  average  well  educated 
man  who  was  Thomas  Blanchard,  the  inevitable  re¬ 
ply  is  a  shake  of  the  head.  It  was  nevertheless  this 
invention  that  gave  New  England  world  supremacy 
ii;  manufactures;  which  superseded  the  old  way  of 
shaping  every  irregular  object  by  knife  or  file. 
ently  closed,  down  over  labor  troubles,  and  not 
only  operatives’  homes  but  outlying  farms  went  beg¬ 
ging.  Many  farms  have  changed  owners  repeatedly, 
each  time  at  a  substantial  raise  in  price,  until  some 
have  sold  for  three  or  four  times  one-time  value, 
these  going  generally  to  buyers  from  the  West. 
Other  industries  appeared — a  rubber  works,  a  linen 
mill,  to  occupy  vacant  buildings,  also  a  smaller  shoe 
concern.  But  I  speak  of  these  things  to  show  how 
unstable  business  affairs  may  be  even  in  a  long- 
settled  country. 
THE  LITTLE  FARM.— My  one-acre  farm  occupies 
the  east  slope  of  one  of  the  several  hills  upon  which 
the  town  is  built.  The  soil  here  is  clay-loam,  diffi¬ 
cult  to  work  in  early  Spring,  but  retentive  of  moist¬ 
ure  in  time  of  drought.  Its  dimensions  are  eight 
rods  by  twenty.  When  purchased,  in  the  Spring  of 
1913,  the  work  of  breaking  was  delayed  until  a 
heavy  crop  of  grass  had  grown,  and  two  whole  days 
Ford’s  Early  is  a  productive  sort  having  early  ears 
of  good  size,  and  should  be  a  favorite, for  the  whole¬ 
sale  trade,  but  not  of  sufficiently  high  quality  for  a 
fancy  home  market.  Potter's  Excelsior  was  above 
criticism,  as  I  have  found  it  to  be  the  criterion  of 
corn  quality  for  30  years.  However,  I  found  in  my 
first  trial  of  the  Nectar  a  variety  more  than  its 
equal  and  wore  I  to  continue  with  white  varieties 
it  would  be  my  exclusive  sort  for  anything  save 
first  early. 
PLANNING  AN  ORCHARD.— In  the  Spring  of  1915 
I  mapped  out  my  piece  of  land  for  orchard,  setting 
all  trees  at  15  feet  each  way.  Apples  comprise  one 
row  lengthwise,  every  alternate  tree  being  a  sour 
cherry.  The  remainder  of  the  trees  are  peach,  pear 
and  plum  in  about  equal  proportions.  Of  the  peach, 
35  are  of  the  new  J.  H.  Hale,  the  remainder  one 
of  each  sort,  for  the  sake  of  experiment  in  varieties. 
Of  the  pear  1  set  40  Cornice,  calculating  to  top-work 
