VOL. XLIX. NO. 2096. NEW YORK, MARCH 29, i89o. 
PRICE, FIVE CENTS. 
$2.00 PER YEAR. 
[Entered According to Act of Congress in the Year 1890, by the Rural New-Yorker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 
£Ji0gtft;pl)Xcal. 
A SUCCESSFUL NEW YORK 
FARMER. 
Charles T. Dibble was born on a farm 
in East Bloomfield, Ontario County, New 
York, in 1830. He received a common- 
school education, attending school in the 
winter and working on the farm the rest of 
the year. For four years after his 21st 
birthday he continued to work for his 
father in the same way as before he was of 
age, and at the expiration of the time his 
father deeded to him a poor 70 acre farm 
without any house, taking back a mort¬ 
gage for $500, which had been given in 
payment for services. In the autumn 
of 1851 he was married and commenced 
farming on his own account the follow¬ 
ing spring, having, in the meantime, built 
a $700 house on his little place. Now 
he owns about 900 acres in the highest 
state of cultivation, in the Genesee Valley, 
in Livington County, besides his residence 
in the village of Lima. 
Believing that general farming is the 
safest, he has grown a diversity of crops 
every season, his principal ones being 
wheat, barley, corn, oats and hay. The 
raising and fattening of stock, especially 
shetp, have been very profitable with him. 
He has never been a fancy farmer and has 
never indulged in fancy stock of any kind. 
The secret of his success has been that he 
has brought into his farm management the 
same elements that the successful mer¬ 
chant uses in his business. Strict integ¬ 
rity, industry, economy, the closest atten¬ 
tion to business, great executive power 
and doing the right thing at the right time 
have made his success what it is. Mr 
Dibble’s son, Edward F., is thoroughly fa¬ 
miliar with all branches of farming. He is 
now writing for the R. N.-Y. a series of ar¬ 
ticles on “ Farming 900 Acres of Land in 
Western New York,” which will detail 
many of the methods which have been 
found profitable on this model farm. 
We give a picture of the elder Mr. Dibble 
at Figure 60. It is a good face. Here is a 
man who has “ made farming pay ” in the 
best sense of the word, and his face shows 
how he did it. 
“A LITTLE FARM WELL TILLED.” 
A Jersey man making money on 18 acres; 
strawberries, eggs and potatoes; “ farm¬ 
ing pays”; lifting a mortgage and 
getting ahead. 
The year 1889 has been a very unfavor¬ 
able one for most farmers. I for one have 
found it the most profitable in my career. 
My farm consists of 18 acres, 15 of which I 
cultivate. The other three acres contain 
my house, barn, five hen houses, yards, etc. 
My total receipts from the farm last year 
were $2,300. My net receipts from two 
acres of strawberries, after having paid for 
picking, carting and commission, was $996 ; 
the gross sales from two acres amounted to 
$1,350. I sold 330 bushels of berries. One 
and a-half acre was under the Great Amer¬ 
ican and half an acre under the Crescent. 
From the Crescent patch we picked 113 bush¬ 
els; altogether it was a large yield consider¬ 
ing the season, which was a poor one for 
strawberries, many persons losing nearly 
their entire crop owing to the wet. My 
ground is low and flat. Both the Great 
American and Crescent will stand consid¬ 
erable wet weather. The American, being 
a large and beautiful berry of fine flavor, 
averaged 15 cents per quart ; while the 
Crescent averaged nine cents. 
My next best paying crop was eggs : 350 
Leghorn hens laid last year 37,127 eggs, of 
which 35,606 were sold and realized $721.56 
in cash. The chickens sold brought in $87.22: 
increase of 100 hens, $50; total $858.78. Cost 
of feed $292.13; profits $566.65, besides all 
the eggs and chickens used in the family, 
which, with several wagon loads of hen 
manure, were worth $75 more. For over 12 
years—ever since I have made the chicken 
business a specialty—I have found it the 
best paying business on the farm. I keep 
an accurate account of all receipts and ex¬ 
penses. I purchase all the grain feed, 
feeding mostly all whole wheat which I 
buy of neighboring farmers, paying from 
90 cents to $1 per bushel. My eggs were all 
sold at wholesale to grocerymen in Pater¬ 
son. 
My other receipts were; potatoes, $137.- 
21; cabbages, $140; onions, $69; pease, 
$54.50; milk and butter from two cows, 
$128.75; and the prices for a few other 
things filled up the balance. 
Now as to my profits: I paid $750 off my 
debt besides paying about $100 interest and 
taxes, and spending $200 in improvements, 
such as building a bay window in the house, 
a new chicken-house and a picket fence 
around the dwelling, etc.; so that all these 
items together would represent over $1,000 
profit. Two years ago I built a new barn, 
costing $1,000, and paid for it entirely from 
that year’s profits. I have five chicken- 
houses, with over 1,500 running feet of wire 
netting fence, costing about $800. Last 
year hired help cost me $260 besides board. 
All the work that I do not do myself 
must be done by hired help. My manure 
bill was nearly $400. I now make nearly 
all my own fertilizer and find it about as 
good as what I buy, and it does not cost 
half so much. I buy dissolved bone-blacK, 
muriate of potash and jflaster and mix 
them with my hen manure. My potato 
crop of four acres was nearly a failure, 
though the manure cost over $100. I dug 
only 250 bushels—large and small—mostly 
small. I usually get that amount from one 
acre. The vines were never finer ; but the 
crop having been planted late and being a 
late variety, the blight caught it before the 
tubers were half grown, and they rotted 
considerably. My land is low and flat and 
as there is scarcely one foot fall from one 
end to the other, it is impossible to under¬ 
drain it. When I bought the farm I was 
laughed at, as the land was considered of 
no value, being so low and wet. The form¬ 
er owner had purchased it for what the 
buildings were worth. I was advised to 
seed it nearly all down to grass. My ad¬ 
visers said I could not raise any winter 
grain on it, though I might pick out an 
acre or two for potatoes. I have raised fine 
crops of winter grain and potatoes on near¬ 
ly the whole of it. I have now five acres 
seeded down with rye, which looks fine. 
The first few years I raised mostly buck¬ 
wheat, as I could not plow early enough for 
other crops. 1 then dug a deep ditch through 
the middle of the farm, plowing the lands 
always one way, ridging them up in the 
center, the open furrows of each land 
emptying into the ditch. My land will now 
stand considerable wet, and in a dry sea¬ 
son I am almost sure of good crops. The 
soil is a dark, sandy loam with a stiff sub¬ 
soil ; there are no ‘stones. It is now highly 
enriched with manure. My receipts for 
the past eight years have averaged over 
$2,000 a year. The crops I depend on most¬ 
ly'are'chickens and eggs, strawberries, po¬ 
tatoes and cabbages. 
I havQ for this year four acres of straw¬ 
berries—three of Great Americans and one 
of Crescents—two of the acres are what I 
picked last year. After picking I mowed 
the vines with the machine; then plowed 
between the rows, making the rows nar¬ 
rower. In about two weeks I ran the cul¬ 
tivator through the paths, leveling them 
off. I got out all the weeds and grass, and 
applied a good dressing of home-made fer¬ 
tilizer. AlS winter set in I top-dressed with 
city manure and covered with hay. The 
four acres cost me in manure and work 
over $400. They now look fine, and if the 
season is good, I expect to do much better 
than last year. 1 now have my little farm 
in good shape, having all the necessary 
buildings, tools,'etc., which have cost me 
considerable money. When I purchased 
the farm, 20 years ago, the house was all 
out of order. A shed was the only barn, 
there were no fences, the land was all over¬ 
grown with brush, running briars, five- 
fingers, etc. The previous owner had done 
nothing with it, except to cut what wild 
grass grew on it. He had no money to 
put it in repair, so he had to sell it. I 
bought it when all kinds of property were 
booming, so I paid a big price for it. 
Having but little money when I bought it, 
I got nearly $3,000 in debt, which I have 
now nearly wiped out. If my health con¬ 
tinue good, I expect in the future to make 
my little one-horse farm pay well. (I have 
kept only one horse, but he is a good one.) 
U ex pect to extend my chicken interest. 
During the past 12 years I have realized 
over 100 per cent, profit. I have now— 
March 10—about 425 laying hens, am get¬ 
ting 235 to 250 eggs a day and I 
get 22 cents per dozen wholesale for the 
eggs, realizing over $4 a day. The food 
costs not quite $1 a day. The fowls are con¬ 
fined most of the time in their houses 
through the winter. As to the mode of feed¬ 
ing : every day I boil half a bushel of small 
potatoes, mash them, and mix meal and 
middlings with them, adding some ground 
bone, a little charcoal and Cayenne pepper. 
I soak overnight about four quarts of 
pork scraps, boil them up in the morning 
and mix the whole mess together, making 
a large tubful in all, and give it warm the 
first thing. I then cut up fine over a bush¬ 
el of clover hay ; put it in a barrel, pour over 
it a kettle of boiling water, cover with 
bags until it steams; at noon I mix in a lit¬ 
tle middlings and serve it warm. The 
birds soon eat it up clean. One hour before 
sundown, I give them wheat, oats, corn 
and buckwheat, thrown in a lot of cut hay 
so that they have to scratch lively for the 
grain. In every house a dust bath, oyster 
shells and gravel are placed. Just now 
about all one man can do is to attend to 
them. The buildings are cleaned out twice 
a week. 
I attribute my success to close attention 
to business, giving it much study and 
thought. I take four agricultural papers, 
and get valuable information from them all; 
but I appreciate the Rural most highly; 
my only regret is I did not come across it 
sooner. It has been a good help to me in 
giving the experience and opinions of 
practical farmers on all manner of subjects. 
I adopted the Rural.Trench System for po¬ 
tatoes four years ago, and found it made a 
great difference in the yield. A. J. 
Lincoln Park, N. J. 
% 
CHARLES T. DIBBLE. From a Photograph. Fig. 60. 
