1008 . 
THE RURAb NEW-YORKER 
SOT 
Hope Farm Notes 
THE HOPE FARM MAN’S STORY. 
Part VII. 
On the lower lands we have experi¬ 
mented until we think we know what 
we want to do. I am crowding things 
there as best I can. For example, on 
one piece of ground 36x216 feet we havg 
now growing 300 large currant bushes, 
about 50 peach trees, 300 early cabbage, 
three rows of sweet corn and about 
2,500 good strawberry plants. As the 
early sweet corn is picked the stalks 
will be cut and late cabbage set in the 
hills. In this piece the strawberry 
plants are between the currant bushes. 
Adjoining this is a piece 96x174 feet, in 
which are growing 108 peach and plum 
trees, while a barrel of potatoes have 
been planted between the rows of ber¬ 
ries, along the tree rows and between 
the berry plants. Include those two 
pieces in a space about 140x220 and you 
will find in addition to the above men¬ 
tioned crops 10,000 transplanted onion 
plants, 2,600 strawberry plants set out 
on Kevitt’s plan, about 1,200 pepper 
plants and some 250 hills of pole Lima 
beans! We try to crowd the lower 
fields or part of them in this way, ma¬ 
nuring heavily, harrowing nearly a 
dozen times before planting and giving 
as thorough culture as we can. The 
weeds get away with us sometimes, but 
we learn each year a little better how to 
master them. I can, if need be, grow a 
large value in fruits and vegetables with 
a hoe and my fingers, but the plants 
must be good ones, well fed and close 
together. I would not do it in an Iowa 
cornfield with corn at 40 cents, but in a 
Jersey garden you have quite a different 
proposition. I now see what I could 
have done with that stony little Cape 
Cod farm if I had stuck to it for 40 
years and knew what I do now. If my 
boys stick to my farm during the next 
40 years, drain the wet places, harness 
the little brook and take care of the soil 
there will be no end to the income from 
the old place. But who can make them 
see it? I doubt my ability to do so! I 
wouldn’t listen at their age. When I 
was a boy the minister’s horse devel¬ 
oped more evil thoughts than his master 
could sterilize in the pulpit. That horse 
ranged in the road for much of the food 
he got, and he broke into gardens or 
tramped flower beds in all parts of the 
parish. We were taught to have great 
respect for the cloth in those days, so 
that horse didn’t go to the pound. A 
certain bad boy one day, after taking a 
scolding which should have gone to the 
horse, tied a stick on old Gray’s neck 
with a bunch of clover dangling at the 
end of it. That clover swung just where 
old Gray could nibble at it and yet never 
touch it—it was always about an inch 
out of his reach. He chased that clover 
step by step some miles out of our 
neighborhood into a country where he 
was not the minister’s horse, but just “a 
horse.” There he got what was coming 
to him as a trespasser. I am inclined to 
think eight out of 10 of the boys I have 
known go stepping away after things 
that are just beyond their reach. They 
seldom get to them. Not all of them 
are treated with as much consideration 
as old Gray was when he got among 
strangers. 
I think I have now made clear what 
my plan is as regards crops. On June 
1 we had planted on the hills over six 
acres of corn among peach and apple 
trees. There are some seven acres 
more in Crimson clover—not a full 
stand, but able to give considerable hay. 
The best of this will be cut at once and 
the stubble plowed under. About four 
acres more will be planted to flint corn 
and the balance and also another old 
field seeded to buckwheat and Crimson 
clover about July 1. On a newly cleared 
piece of land of something more than 
an acre we shall plant Hubbard squash 
and melons. There are nearly 3,000 
peach and apple trees from two to five 
years old on the hill. There are some 
600 peach trees that will fruit this year. 
The apple crop will be small—probably 
not over 400 boxes. Four acres of 
rye have just been cut in the alleys be¬ 
tween young apple trees. This will be 
used as hay. The clover is coming in 
to follow. About eight acres of grass 
will be cut for hay. On the lower 
farm we have about an acre of aspara¬ 
gus, over two acres of potatoes, over 
an acre in strawberries, 3,000 pepper 
plants, 10,000 transplanted onion plants, 
in addition to peas, beans, bush fruits, 
cabbage, sweet corn and garden vege¬ 
tables. After strawberry picking we 
shall set about 12,000 cabbage and, per¬ 
haps, try our hand at celery. There are 
also two acres of Alfalfa—which is not 
a source of great pride—three acres Qf 
oats and peas and patches of Japanese 
millet and fodder corn. If the rain will 
ever let up we hope to keep these crops 
clean—if it doesn’t I fear we shall have 
a forest of weeds. We find a use for 
weeds, however. They can be pulled 
and piled around young trees. I have 
great belief in the power of any rea¬ 
sonably well-made soil to produce great 
value to the acre, provided we know 
what the soil needs and can supply it. 
My farm lies in streaks. Part of it is 
so wet that we can do nothing with it 
until the soil is thoroughly drained. 
Another part is so sour that it will be 
useless to plant it until lime is used. 
Another part is so empty of humus that 
weeds will scarcely grow there. It 
bakes like a brick with a few days of 
hot sunshine following a rain. Still 
another part is a light streak of sandy 
loam, incapable of holding moisture. 
Now all these different streaks must 
be handled differently. My belief is 
that the great majority of eastern 
farms are somewhat like mine in this, 
and that one trouble with farming is 
that we do not recognize the fact, but 
try to raise a large crop without con¬ 
sidering the real needs of the soil. Take 
soil that is neither too level nor too 
steep, and I think a good farmer can 
make it about what he wants. He can 
drain and lime the heavy soil, or plow 
vegetable matter into the sand until the 
two are not far apart. In ancient times 
the great cities were fed from the 
deserts. The dry, sandy soils filled the 
granaries so long as water was pro¬ 
vided. Water and sand are pointed out 
as about the most unstable things in the 
universe, yet when they are put to¬ 
gether properly they hold up society. 
There has been a strong prejudice 
against light soil. In Michigan and 
other western States great tracts of 
pine have been cut away, leaving a poor, 
thin soil full of pine stumps. When 
I worked in the lumber camps 25 years 
ago no one figured on the value of this 
land after the timber was cut. It was 
considered too thin to be productive. 
I believe now that with the right treat¬ 
ment it can be made to produce as large 
crops of grain, grass or other crops as 
any soil in the country. 
While the soil crops at Hope Farm are 
developing much as I planned, the 
human crops are more interesting to me. 
Our crops run to weeds now and then, 
and beat me so that we are ashamed of 
the results. We can if need be plow 
them out of sight and start again. That 
is a farm surgical operation that is 
quite effective, but a crop of weeds in 
the children is a more serious propo¬ 
sition. You try to pull these weeds out 
of a person whose habits are well 
formed and see how you make out. 
Every man of 50 is bound to say that 
the children of to-day are inferior in 
many ways to those of 40 years ago. 
That is a safe statement, because there 
is no way of disproving it. Put my 
boys out as I was to hustle for them¬ 
selves, and I think one of them would 
make it after a fashion, while the other 
would wilt. The field on my farm that 
we use for a pasture contains the rich¬ 
est soil anywhere about here. It would 
make ideal soil for Marshall straw¬ 
berries if it were drained and con¬ 
quered. It makes me ache to see it 
given up to the stock to nibble over 
and I must take it in hand next year. 
Mother says that then there will be no 
pasture for the stock. I tell her how 
all over the country the most successful 
dairymen have no pasture—only a place 
for the cattle to exercise. They can 
grow four times as much food on a 
cultivated field as on the same field 
under the hoofs of the cattle. 
“But I don’t see why if it is the nature 
of an animal to roam at large, it is 
right to handle them any other way.” 
“But your ancestors roamed at large, 
lived in caves or even climbed trees! 
Three generations back your forebears 
never heard of a bathroom or a 
sewing machine or even a stove! By 
the same argument it would be ‘nature’ 
for you to live as crudely as thev did. 
You are more comfortable and can ac¬ 
complish more by using these modern 
conveniences, and it is the same way 
with cattle or with land. On many a 
farm where land is cheap and there 
would be no local market for straw¬ 
berries or celery, that field should be 
left for the stock. With us it does not 
pay to let it provide $25 worth of pas¬ 
ture when we can make it produce $300 
worth of other things.” 
There is something of this to be con¬ 
sidered with children. With a hot- 
water heater in the house, my boys can¬ 
not be expected to get up and shake the 
snow off the bed covers as many of us 
have done. If they went out to do the 
rough work that I did and my father 
before me the chances are that they 
would have to compete with the scum 
of Southern Europe, unless they went 
to a good farm. My boys are inter¬ 
ested in history, and I think they begin 
to understand something of the phil¬ 
osophy of it. _ One of the most forcible 
lessons of history to me is found in 
the fierce battles for the possession of 
Spain. The Goths came out of the 
North strong and fierce as barbarians, 
and conquered the country. Wealth and 
luxury spoiled them. They could no 
longer fight, and when the Saracens 
came from Africa they found only a 
crowd of weak and feeble cowards to 
oppose them. The Goths were driven 
from their rich cities into the rough 
mountains. Yet in those hard and 
rugged solitudes, forced to endure pri¬ 
vations and want, they regained their 
vigor and kept their faith, so that in 
later years their descendants, made 
strong by battling against hard condi¬ 
tions, came down from the mountains 
and by hard fighting recovered their 
country. 
In starting Hope Farm I reasoned 
that there is no surer way to obtain or 
recover health, courage and character 
than by conquering a wild piece of 
land. I reasoned so then—now I know 
it. I do not know any more useful or 
inspiring thing for a child than for him 
to feel he has helped save a piece of 
land and bring it from a state of worse 
than idleness to a productive property. 
And when you come to think of it the 
boy who is able and willing to do this 
brings about the noblest gift there is 
to his country. There isn’t a man on 
the face of the earth who wouldn’t be 
made better by fighting a tough piece 
of stumpy old sod year by year, until 
it is smooth and mellow enough for 
onions or strawberries. He might work 
at it as a convict in ball and chain, yet 
at the end he would be glorified at the 
victory. 
I should be sorry to have any person 
at Hope Farm who couldn’t go out on 
Sunday afternoon and look over his 
week’s work with pride for at least 
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