1902 
579 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Loafing Days.— The Hope Farm man 
doesn’t pretend that he cuts a very digni¬ 
fied figure to-day. The spectacle of a 
fleshy man sprawled out on the sand In 
the shade of a boat is not an Inspiring 
one. Here I am flat on the sand six miles 
from any railroad, looking lazily off across 
the bay, while the children are playing 
on the flats, left bare by the tide. Away 
off to the right, Cape Cod curves around 
like a horseshoe to Provincetown. Far off, 
dimly seen across the water to the left, 
Manomet Point butts out into the blue. 
Bight over the other side of it is the spot 
I came from. The tide has backed far 
out and seems to have taken every bit 
of care and worry along with it. The 
weeds in that cornfield at home do not 
bother me now. I do not care if that lazy 
windmill is standing still! Here the mills 
are whirling. Potato blight, hog cholera, 
wireworms, low prices, they are all buried 
out in the ocean. They may come back 
with the tide, but who cares, lying here 
in a half dream with the smell of the salt 
air and an appetite that would lend flavor 
to a raw dog? Certainly no sensible per¬ 
son who can get as much enjoyment out 
of a piece of fried fish as your humble 
servant can! I know some of these hard 
old chaps will shake their heads and say: 
“Such lazy loafing never will pay that 
mortgage! That's bad talk to set before 
mother and the children when they ask 
for a vacation!” Now you can’t quarrel 
with me to-day to save your life! You will 
have to do the fighting for two. I’ll just 
lie here without energy enough to feel 
sorry for you. Why, even Julia the black 
cow would refuse to kick down here! But 
look out for us when we shake the sand 
off our cfiothes and get back to New' 
Jersey! You don’t hear much from a 
storage battery when the electrical cur¬ 
rent is running into it, but hands off, 
when it is well cnarged! The mortgage 
may smile at the loss of a few days and 
dollars, but the sharpened wdt and the 
hardened nerve may perform a surgical 
operation on it that will cut the sting out 
with all its roots. A man is usually 
bravest when he is laziest, and as I sprawl 
on the sand, with the breeze blowing the 
old doubts and gloom away, I feel like 
wishing that every honest, hard-working 
man, woman and child on the farms could 
knock off and get right down 'nto the 
sand for a week or 10 days. They could 
dream off a world of trouble and bother 
and then go back home glad enough to 
take up the old burdens. The gall on the 
shoulder would be healed and w'e would 
know how to adjust the harness so as not 
to make it raw again. When mv .fingers 
used to get chilly, picking up potatoes in 
the Fall, I never felt that I lost time by 
stopping to slap my hands around to my 
back. 
A Hard Country.— I speak of one who 
comes to Cape Cod for a loaf and then is 
glad to get back home. Any man ought 
to be glad to go home, but few who come 
here for a brief season would care to re¬ 
main the year around. It is a great place 
to go away from. Bone, nerve and char¬ 
acter are bred here, hard and firm, but 
there are, or seem to be, few opportune 
ties for the strong and ambitious. The 
Graft is not very strong on geography yet. 
As we sat watching a big fire of drift¬ 
wood one night he suddenly asked, “Are 
we in America now?” Cape Cod in Ameri¬ 
ca! That’s pretty tough to one who knows 
American history, isn’t it? This sandy 
arm, stretched out like a prize fighter’s 
to ward off the ocean has stood centuries 
of pounding and has never lowered its 
guard to ocean or king. In America? 
You ought to count the little Decoration 
Day flags in one of these sleepy little 
churchyards, for an answer to that ques¬ 
tion. There are those who say that noth¬ 
ing 13 American that is not “up to date.” 
If we take that standard Cape Cod is out 
of it, for industrial progress has hit it 
hard. The population of Barnstable 
County is, I understand, slowly declining. 
I see many houses in town and country 
apparently abandoned. Cape Cod is still 
"in America,” but it does a good share of 
its work for country elsewhere. People 
come here worn out and broken like the 
wounded stragglers dropped by an army 
out of battle. Here the sea breeze and 
the lazy dream of the ocean heal the 
hurt of nerve and mind and back they go 
into the world’s treadmill for another 
round. The Cape Cod man may hustle 
when he gets out where hustling pays, but 
he doesn’t seem to do much of it at home. 
That’s good, for I should hate to lie here 
half asleep and see some wideawake man 
driving a Job hard. It seems as though 
the wind heaped up this spit of sand so 
that the weary and sorrow-stained might 
stand on it and be blown clean. Yet the 
same bad weather that held up operations 
at Hope Farm and filled us with weeds 
has put weeds of sorrow on the hopes of 
the Cape Cod landlord. 
Caps Cod Farming.— It’» all very well 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
to come here for a short time and enjoy 
the romance of a loafer's dream, but an¬ 
other thing to live here the year through. 
With us the struggle to butter the bread 
is away off—far from this lazy spread on 
the sand. With the Cape Cod farmer the 
fight for pork and fish takes most of the 
poetry out of the sea. The Summer 
boarder crop is a good one. Those who 
take boarders and raise the vegetables, 
fruit, eggs, milk and chickens required 
to feed them appear to have struck a 
good business. I should think the stoutest 
of them would look with dismay upon 
such a family as mine. Our combined ap¬ 
petite is all out of proportion to our com¬ 
bined weight. As we sit at the table, I 
fear we are getting more of the middle¬ 
man’s share out of the farm than the 
fellows who stand between the western 
grain farm and the consumer. I have not 
left the shore enough to form a fair idea 
of what Cape Cod farming is, but what 
I have seen would be called small potatoes 
in New Jersey. The soil seems to be very 
light and greatly lacking in humus. It is 
possible that if a farmer were to use fer¬ 
tilizers as heavily as Mr. Hewlett does he 
could obtain large crops of corn and po¬ 
tatoes, but I think the conditions are 
quite different. If I owned a farm here 
I would try lime and cow peas. This soil 
seems to be too full of salt. I feel quite 
sure that the lime would sweeten it and 
make it respond. It is likely that Early 
Black and perhaps Wonderful cow peas 
would make a fair growth of vine. If 
they did, and could be plowed under, this 
land ought to produce good corn, and with 
the prices paid for grain and fodder the 
corn crop here ought to pay better than 
potatoes with us. They are digging pota¬ 
toes here now—Early Rose—a small yield 
of very fine quality. The vines seem to 
have died prematurely with a form of 
early blight. I believe I could double the 
yield by planting northern seed of Junior 
Pride and spraying two or three times 
so that the vines might mature naturally. 
It is, of course, folly for one who farms 
under entirely different conditions to at¬ 
tempt to tell people what to do on this 
light soil. I see low pockets here and 
there where cranberries are growing and 
apparently doing well. There aye also 
occasional fields of corn and potatoes 
which would be a credit to any farmer. 
These things seem to indicate not so much 
the superior quality of these pieces of 
land, but the fact that some man has 
studied out the needs of the soil or crop 
and supplied them. Too many farmers 
seem to have quit trying to increase their 
crop. I do not pretend to say that Cape 
Cod can raise corn or potatoes so as to 
compete in the Boston market with Illi¬ 
nois or Michigan, but I believe this soil 
can hold its own for the local market, 
for surely there is some of it here as 
strong as that on which Mr. Hewlett does 
business.*’' Tt seems absurd for a Jersey- 
man to advise a Cape Cod Yankee, but I 
know what I would do with this seaweed 
and waste fish! 
Boy Training.— I also have an Idea what 
I would do if I were a boy again and was 
given the lesson in agriculture I saw ad¬ 
ministered the other day. I saw it at a 
distance, and must take It out in panto¬ 
mime, but my eyes are very good. A man 
and a boy were hoeing in a garden—pull¬ 
ing weeds with hand and hoe that should 
have been killed with a horse and culti¬ 
vator. The boy seemed to object to pull¬ 
ing weeds in a certain place, and the man 
evidently ordered him to work faster. The 
boy stopped to argue about It, and the 
man swung his hoe at him. It was a 
murderous blow, but the boy dodged it. 
Then the man followed him up, striking 
right and left till the boy slipped and got 
the full force of that hoe on his back. He 
went over flat, and the man gave him two 
more good ones with the hoe handle. Then 
he ordered him back to work, and this 
time the boy crawled to his place and 
pulled those useless weeds. Now I have 
read about such things in books, and I 
know a man who had some little taste of 
a hoe handle when he was a boy! I hope 
that isn’t a fair sample of the way prac¬ 
tical agriculture Is taught down here. I 
am distinctly a man of peace, but if I 
were that boy my present opinion is that 
I would give that man one good welt with 
the hoe and get out! I know the story 
books tell of such boys who go off in a 
dignified way, make a great fortune and 
then come back and pay the old man’s 
mortgage! The fortune and the mortgage 
payment are all right, but in such a case 
as I witnessed, a good crack over the 
head would make a good nest for those 
“coals of fire” later on! It rouses every 
drop Of my fighting blood to see a boy 
knocked about that way. But I must end 
this, or some smart fellow will ask why 
I didn’t sail in and take the boy’s part. 
Some other keen mind may ask why I 
object to a hoe handle and use a light 
shingle myself at times—out behind the 
shed! 
Here and There.—I hope the boys will 
have that corn cleaned up before I get 
back. It's time those strawberry plants 
were set out—but all that is far away, and 
the Madame is calling me to go in bathing. 
When an old fellow gets into the salt 
water after many years he surely im¬ 
agines he is a boy again! It seemed to 
me that 35 years had been kicked off tne 
calendar, and I had just made a dive from 
Robbin’s wharf. I struck out—but you 
don’t catch me out where it is overhead 
right away. I still know how to swim—a 
man can’t forget that any more than a 
bullfrog can, but it comes painfully home 
to you that you swim with your lunyst 
A fellow learns lots of useful things as 
he gets along in years. Here was the 
Graft .claiming he could swim. He made 
a great splashing and seemed to progress 
a little, but I thought I saw one foot 
dragging on the ground. I took him out 
over his head and turned him loose and, 
sure enough, down he went! The world is 
quite full of people who make a great 
bellow over what they can do, while all 
the time they have one foot on some¬ 
body’s back. It pays to toss such folks 
out and make them really learn to swim. 
. . . There Is a fine road running for 
miles along the Cape—smooth and hard. 
Posted at intervals along this road Is this 
sign: “Don’t drive in the middle of the 
road!” The object is to keep the road 
well rounded and not dished at the center 
—and it is a good suggestion. When the 
Populists started up as a political party 
they had a song, “Keep in the Middle of 
the Road.” They would have lasted 
longer if they had followed the Cape Cod 
advice. . . . The children have been 
fishing and caught perch perhaps three 
inches long. The Madame made them 
throw these little fish back. My advice 
was to make them keep at least one for 
a sample to show the exact size; otherwise 
these fish would be two feet long when it 
came to telliny about them! Never en¬ 
courage a boy to tell about the fish he 
lost or threw away! h. w. c. 
Creaming a Paper.— I take quite a few 
papers, and therefore cannot let them ac¬ 
cumulate. Anything I think of value I clip 
out and place in my scrap book, which 
contains envelopes 6x!) inches, with memor¬ 
andum lines on the outside of envelopes. 
These envelopes are all held together by 
two steel pins within a nicely bound cover. 
By this method I can classify everything 
in detail and discard anything at anytime. 
Thus I have a fund of information at a 
moment’s notice. J. v. l. 
Everett, Wash. 
Don’t Use Power.— I admire The R. N.- 
Y. for its terseness and clearness, and pa¬ 
tient explanation time after time of what 
it would seem all farmers ought to know. 
While it is commendable to give line upon 
line and precept upon precept, in my hum¬ 
ble opinion what farmers need is not more 
knowledge, but backbone to use the knowl¬ 
edge they have poured into them, and 
the power—political power—as in securing 
the Grout bill. The reason we don’t have 
fractional currency and parcel post is sim¬ 
ply because farmers don’t use the political 
power they know they have. Your paper is 
the best. f. v. a. 
Wayne Co., Ind. 
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