202 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
February 18, 
Hope Farm Notes 
FLORIDA NOTES. No. 2. 
The cow was there and when those dogs 
saw us approaching her they went back to 
lie down, evidently well satisfied that old 
“black and white” could take care of her¬ 
self. And she could! It was a typical 
woods cow, larger than the average, but 
with the same tremendous growth of horn 
and bone. That cow was not giving three 
pints of milk, though there was a young 
calf running about. I can well understand 
•why this clergyman did not care to do 
business on Sunday -with such a cow ! I 
have heard about deacons who trade horses, 
and I would match them against clergymen 
who sell “two-gallon cows.” I have, since 
then, been kicked while milking a Honda 
cow and had part of the milk put on m> 
clothes, and 1 know that ‘three-gallon 
cows” are figured like the big fish that got 
away — you guess at the amount and mul¬ 
tiply the guess. Back we wandered through 
the darkness, which comes on rapidly in 
Florida. There was a little mist of fine 
rain, and these abandoned houses looked 
like the wrecks of homes as old Prank 
toiled past them. , 
“Seems like he must, he lonesome, said 
Uncle Ed, as he pointed through the dim 
light off into the woods. There was a 
single gravestone right in the forest. it 
was, no doubt, the beginning of a grave¬ 
yard. This single grave had been made at 
the time of the great freeze. Bike the 
homes, it was abandoned, and the pine 
forest had closed in and grown back to its 
own. Happily the sleeper is no. longer 
troubled by the petty freaks of nature or 
man which may change the history of coun¬ 
tries. , _ . 
Of course we had our excuses for not 
bringing home a cow. Mine was that the 
color did not suit the complexion of my 
wife and daughter. We were ready to fol¬ 
low up several now trails in the inoining. 
After supper I was just in time to see a 
couple of the little red-heads get ready for 
bed There were several tablespoonfuls of 
sand poured out of each little shoe, there 
were sand burrs to be picked out, and feet 
and face and hands that turned water close 
to the color of ink. But they were finally 
soaked clean and tucked away into bod to 
dream of another sunny day in the Florida 
sand. When the sun goes down in this 
country there comes a sudden chill in the 
air, and an open fire is pleasant. So after 
supper a good fire of logs was started in 
the fireplace and our folks gathered around 
it Heat is rarely needed in the sleeping 
rooms. In case of need little stoves per¬ 
haps the size of a peck measure are put in 
these rooms and a fire of fat pine wood 
quickly supplies the heat. The open fire is 
usually started at night, and it makes a 
fine gathering place for the family. The 
(old snap that I spoke of two •weeks ago 
did little damage. Water pipes froze and 
potatoes were killed, but the oranges were 
not injured. The only members of the 
family to complain seriously of the cold 
were the boys who had to do extra work 
cutting wood. You will see that life pro¬ 
ceeds in a very leisurely way in this part 
of Florida. There is not a policeman or a 
lawyer or a constable within miles of us. 
My family provided the entire attendance 
at prayer meeting and practically all the 
congregation at church. There are not 
enough white children for a public school, 
though the colored people have one. We 
have a private school here, with about a 
dozen or 14 pupils—including some “na¬ 
tives.” The down train to-day had a “hot 
box” on one of the cars, and delayed 10 
minutes trying to cool it off. That meant 
more to our place than a murder would 
mean to Broadway. Three of our people 
spent the day at St. Augustine. They had 
to get up at three o'clock in the morning 
and signal the train by waving a lantern. 
They will be back at midnight and as I 
write the boy has gone to leave a lantern 
over by the' station. This reception com¬ 
mittee 'will welcome them. All they have 
to do is to pick it up and find their way 
home without disturbing the rest. 
Another Cow.—The clergyman’s cow 
rather dried up the spring of hope, but 
when morning came we were ready for 
the trail—especially after eating oatmeal 
with “dissolved” milk. This time we went 
prepared for a campaign, and carried a 
lunch large enough for a good-sized army. 
It was not a case of “sunny Florida” this 
time, for the sky was cloudy with a chill 
in the air and promise of rain. 1 took my 
thick overcoat—and it turned out to be a 
good job. This time we took a new road 
which ran through a more hopeful country. 
There were some abandoned houses—mostly 
in the lowlands near the lakes, for until 
a man becomes part alligator he cannot 
go into the wet Florida lands and live in 
comfort. One unhappy victim of a land 
boom told me that when he found a place 
where he could make a living he was in a 
place where no man could live! That was 
pretty nearly true of old ideas in Florida, 
but is I believe now disproved. As our 
road swung away from the lake lands we 
worked gradually upon a sandy ridge. At 
intervals along the road were neat houses 
and prosperous little farms. Each one 
had an orange grove and cleared land for 
farm crops. The people seemed for the 
most part middle-aged and mostly from the 
North. Only here and there did one ever 
sec a white child, and that seemed to be 
guarded as a remarkable treasure. You got 
the notion in riding over this road that here 
was a community of Winter homes where 
people past the prime of life and with 
reasonable capital were putting the full 
value upon the Florida climate in order to 
figure a profit. One place in particular in- 
terested me. A man and his wife of perhaps 
60 had a neatly painted house, a young 
orange grove and a good herd of hogs 
running in a fenced yard. A good mule 
stood inside a log pen and tools were under 
a shed. I believe 10 good brood sows 
properly handled in that country will pay 
better than any orange grove that one man 
can handle, for the future of northern 
Florida will, I am sure, be based on some 
form of live stock keeping. 
But we were after a cow. The first one 
we struck was at the point of "going dry”— 
a little yellow mongrel with big horns. The 
next one, reported as a “two-gallon” animal, 
was in a 10-acre pasture full of palmetto 
and brush. We were instructed to hunt 
her up. It was like a fox hunt, but finally 
we found a small black animal, wild as 
a hawk, and probably giving three quarts 
of milk! That was the way it went 
through the forenoon, and 1 cannot say that 
the hunt seemed promising as we halted old 
Frank under a pine tree and proceeded to 
milk the package of lunch which Aunt 
l’atience had put up for us. 
“Well,” said Uncle Ed, as he scraped up 
the last crumbs of cake, “there are some 
things that money can't huy.” 
I do not know whether he referred to 
cows or to the appetite we had just satis¬ 
fied, but in either case there was no argu¬ 
ment against his statement. We were now 
in a verv much better section—near a large 
town built on a bluff by the side of Lake 
Orescent. All along the road were groves 
of orange gnd grapefruit which were loaded 
witli a fine crop. The road was a mixture 
of clay and sand, well built and firm. 
The drive along it through these fine groves 
is one to be long .remembered. They were 
well eared for, and in one or two young 
orchards I saw fife pots all ready to be 
started in case the temperature went down. 
There is the menace which constantly hangs 
over orange growing in ttiis section. The 
groves have been frozen several times. As 
stated last week, the “great freeze” dis¬ 
couraged a large share of the growers. Here 
by Lake Crescent men with capital and good 
nerve stayed by the trees and made them 
come bahk into bearing. It is a great 
gamble, for while the groves are now the 
picture of health a single night may spell 
ruin. Jack Frost has only to stretch his 
wing a little and shake the tip of a 
feather over North Florida, and the work 
of years will be blasted. And even with 
years of good nature on the part of old 
jack Frost human nature in the form of 
the middleman steps in and takes the con¬ 
sumer's dollar. I went through a couple of 
packing houses run by the Florida Fruit Ex¬ 
change and looked over the returns made 
for fruit. In one case a shipment of beau¬ 
tiful fruit netted the grower about 45 cents 
a box. In another case a heavy over¬ 
charge bv the railroad made it appear that 
the growers must pay for the privilege of 
shipping. When this overcharge is paid 
back these growers may get 30 cents a box. 
There might be better figures if the fruit 
could be held back, but that feather tip on 
Jack Frost’s wing seems like a mighty 
storm cloud when you need the money and 
the fruit is ready to go. I should consider 
it a wicked thing for a land boomer to ad¬ 
vise a northern man to plant an orange 
grove north of Tampa. He might get it 
through and raise a crop, but it would be 
a gamble with nature, and when he did get 
the fruit the middlemen would get him. 
With the millions of orange trees now being 
planted in California, Texas, Porto Itico and 
Cuba, as well as in Southern Florida. I can 
see no future for the industry above Tampa. 
There are other things which will do better. 
You can learn what they are by going into 
any grocery store in Florida and noticing 
how much of the food sold there is brought 
from the North. We shall get to this part 
of it when we find that cow. 
For we 'did finally get her. I intended to 
have old Frank clipped in this town, but as 
usual iu this happy land, that proved to 
be a job for “some other day.” A gentle 
rain or thick mist' had begun to fall, and 
we put Frank under a shed. Then Uncle 
Ed came to me in some excitement. “Not 
a word,” he said, “I’ve heard of a gallon 
and a half cow.” Then I retired from the 
front. I can't stand with one foot upon a 
box and talk half an hour before coming 
to the point. Uncle Ed beats me at that, 
so he went ahead. I was to play the part 
of critic and find fault with the cow when 
it came to figures. I wish I could give a 
picture showing Uncle Ed arguing first with 
a woman and then with her husband about 
that cow. I felt sure they were telling 
him she was a purebred Jersey and had 
her milk record up to “two gallons.” I 
watched it from a distance until Uncle Ed 
actually rode away with tin; man in an 
automobile which whirled around the corner 
and threw a shower of sand in my direc¬ 
tion. 
While I was waiting for the verdict 1 
wish I could have had you there to view 
that typical Florida scene. The town rose 
gently away from the blue lake. The 
streets are pure sand double the width 
of our northern streets, and in the center 
of most of them stand great trees covered 
with hanging moss. The roadway winds 
round among these trees and when the sun 
is showing it seems like a glimpse into 
fairvland to look from any street corner. 
Now and then a northern visitor bringing 
back his wasted health in the Florida air 
walks by with the qniek nervous step which 
has become an unbreakable habit. For the 
most part, however, people walk with slow, 
aimless steps, as if the foot were sure to 
fall somewhere and that being secure little 
else matters. Three colored boys are play¬ 
ing ball in the sand. A few cows and hogs 
wander about the streets. One cow has 
found a place where the barbed wires are 
charitable, and she is at an orange tree. 
I see her reach up, pick an orange and chew 
it down, skin and all, in calm contentment. 
The lake stretches away blue and clear, with 
green shores and woods sweeping back from 
it. It is a picture of peace and balm of 
mind. Nestling here by its quiet lake what 
does this village care for the struggle and 
roar of the northern city? Many of those 
who live here are veterans who served in 
the business fight and are here to forget 
it 
But I did not forget the cow. Soon 
Uncle Ed came back and led me down a 
street until we came to a sort of public 
square. Here were some half dozen cows 
and a young bull—apparently the bovine 
population of the town. Most of them 
carried cow bells on a strap at the neck. 
There were apparently no pastures—the 
cows wandered through the streets picking 
up what they could find a sucked orange, 
a mouthful of Southern moss, or whatever 
happened in their way. The bull was 
proudly mentioned as a “purebred Jersey” 
but he could not fit the papers. He was a 
silver grey with good hind quarters and tail, 
but no Jersey ever had such neck or horns. 
They came out of the woods! The cow 
in question was a grade Jersey of fair size 
and shape. No one knew when she would 
be fresh. She looked as if she were giving 
about four quarts. She looked like a fair 
animal, the gamble in this case being how 
much milk you could get out of her. At 
any rate she was a coic and the best bar¬ 
gain I had yet seen. H. w. c. 
km 
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