160 
1912. 
THE RUKAE NEW-YORKER 
A “ BACK TO THE LAND ” EXPERIENCE. 
True Tale of a Farm Trial. 
PART I. 
About the first of last April (sugges¬ 
tive date), I arranged for a six months’ 
vacation, and with $600 in my pocket 
started to try my hand at farming. The 
farm has been in my possession for 
about eight years, and in that time I 
have planted an orchard of 1,600 and 
some odd trees of various fruits; have 
also read nearly everything relating to 
farming that 1 could find, so naturally 
supposed I knew something about farm¬ 
ing. My mistakes began before I start¬ 
ed, and it might be well to say now, 
that this article will bear a close re¬ 
semblance to a catalogue of mistakes and 
mishaps. 
A $45 horse from a city “gyp’' and a 
covered grocery wagon were bought to 
help move our household effects. The 
wagon, although a good one, was prac¬ 
tically useless for moving, as it had to 
be unloaded to get it on the boat, and 
was too heavy for one horse to drag 
over the hills and rough roads of Ulster 
Co., N. Y. Of the horse more anon. 
We arrived at our landing on the 4th of 
April, and with the help of two neigh¬ 
bors and their teams, we managed to 
get our things into the new home by 
making three trips over the three miles 
of rough hills, mud and slush that lay 
between the Hudson River and the farm. 
To make the experience more interesting 
it snowed about half the day, and turn¬ 
ed to sleet the rest of the day, and it 
was well into the night before we were 
finished. The old horse worked nobly 
on this occassion, although he flinched 
a little at facing the driving sleet on the 
last trip to the boat. Luckily my wife 
remained in the city a few days longer, 
or the farming operations might have 
ended right then and there. My neigh¬ 
bors, who, by the way, refused any pay 
for their services, insisted on taking me 
home with them for the night. Their 
help gave me renewed courage for the 
fray. So, as the trees had become in¬ 
fested with San Jose scale, I started out 
the next morning to spray them with 
lime-sulphur solution. I had bought a 
barrel spray pump, but had to stop and 
hunt up a barrel, which consumed con¬ 
siderable time; then had to build a stone 
boat to hold the outfit, and after trying 
to spray awhile found that the six feet 
of hose that came with the pump was 
practically useless, and had quite a hunt 
to find a place where I could buy a 20- 
foot length of hose. I found the stone- 
boat too narrow and the pump too top- 
heavy, and in going over rough places 
and steep hills, it tipped over several 
times and finally broke the handle off 
short, which meant a trip to the black¬ 
smith. All these interruptions took 
time, and as the dormant season was near 
its close, I had to spray with and against 
the wind, which meant I often got the 
spray in my eyes in spite of the pair 
of goggles I wore. The horse turned 
green where the blanket did not cover 
him, and stayed so for a month after. 
Of course this work kept me from do¬ 
ing much toward getting the house in 
order, so when my wife arrived the 
place had a rather discouraging aspect, 
with the mud we movers had tracked in, 
the furniture topsy-turvy, and every¬ 
thing cold and cheerless. The kitchen 
stove was the only source of heat, and 
that would only burn when the wind 
was in the right direction. It is better 
to draw a veil over what my wife said 
when she surveyed the scene, and 
thought of the cozy little flat she had 
left in the city. The house was a di¬ 
lapidated wagonshed and granary when 
we bought the farm, and we turned it 
into a Summer dwelling which we rent¬ 
ed to city “campers.” It had looked 
rather bright and cheerful when we had 
seen it occupied in campers’ style dur¬ 
ing the Summer, but it had quite a dif¬ 
ferent appearance now. So before the 
furniture was unpacked, the walls had 
to be boarded up, and papered and bur- 
laped, the rough overhead beams boxed 
in, new glass put in the windows, paint¬ 
ing, etc. Between spraying and carpen¬ 
tering April was certainly a busy month. 
On the 4th of May 100 baby White 
Wyandottes, which we had ordered for 
a start in poultry, arrived. It happened 
to be a very cold spell just then, and 
although they had only about 30 miles to 
come, for sojne reason they were over 
three days on the way, and were packed 
in a thin pasteboard box with no lining. 
There were seven dead in the box, and 
14 more dead by the next morning, and 
thereafter for about three weeks it was 
the usual thing every time I came to 
the house to find my wife weeping over 
a dying chick. We used the unheated 
homemade brooders, in a room over the 
kitchen until it was warm enough out 
of doors. We raised nine and four of 
them developed into nice pullets. We 
bought five hens at an auction, and they 
kept us supplied with eggs all Summer. 
Whenever there was a warm day in 
May, wasps appeared by hundreds in our 
rooms, and clustered about the windows. 
We would gladly have let them out, but 
wire window-screens had been nailed 
over all the windows. My wife, in spite 
of her fear of them, and many stings 
would often spend half a day killing 
them, but we never were able entirely 
to rid the house of them. 
I had planned to raise about an acre 
of potatoes and an acre of sweet corn 
as being most suitable for an old sod. 
That certainly sounded easy. The 
ground should have been plowed the 
Fall before, but we were not sure of 
starting at that time, so we had a tough 
sod at least eight years’ old to start with. 
We hired it plowed as early as possible, 
and I harrowed it as best I could. The 
horse was willing, but old and unused to 
rough ground. He refused to go 
straight except when he was in a beaten 
road. The soil was full of stones, and 
between the stones and furrows he soon 
went lame. I cut the potatoes, soaked 
them in formalin and dusted them with 
sulphur, to the amazement of the neigh¬ 
bors. They don't believe much in book¬ 
farming, and they cracked many a merry 
joke at my expense. I started to plant 
them with a hoe, but soon found that 
was too slow; hired the rows plowed out 
and started again. Still too slow, and 
hired a man to help plant. Got in one 
barrel of earlv and nearly four barrels 
of late; dug three barrels of early and 
half a barrel of very small late pota¬ 
toes. The trouble, as nearly as I can 
locate it, was no rain until September, 
and a tough sod which did not decay. 
The fertilizer was still in the hills when 
the potatoes were dug. The early pota¬ 
toes I peddled in Kingston at 40 to 50 
cents a peck, and the late ones we 
brought back to the city with us. Sweet 
corn produced nothing for market, but 
supplied our table and helped to feed 
the pigs. A quarter acre of field corn 
produced half a bushel of ears. Our 
garden was planted in a naturally moist 
spot, and did quite well. The parsley, 
of which we had about 250 feet of row, 
grew immensely toward the end of Sum¬ 
mer. There did not seem to be much 
market demand for it, however, and 
most of it was left to die where it grew. 
The parsnips grew well also, and we 
have about 250 feet of row of them still 
in the ground. These were the two 
things which did best for us, and we 
were rather surprised, as we thought 
these were the more difficult to raise. 
They produced some backache also. 
R. A. Y. 
Like a 
Pleasant 
Thought 
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