636 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
April 12, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
Cape Cod 
Part II 
In 1849 and again in 1855 Henry D. 
Thoreau made trips to Cape Cod, walk¬ 
ing for miles along the Atlantic beach, 
lie says he went largely to get a view of 
the Atlantic Ocean—and he certainly got 
it. The story is told in “Cape Cod.” 
.Most of his observations were made of 
the section beyond Eastham or Nansett 
where the elbow of the Cape is located. 
Thoreau tells of finding elderly men on 
the Cape who actually heard the big guns 
fired at Bunker Hill, and remembered 
seeing Washington as he rode through 
Boston. These old men were strong and 
sound, with flesh as well preserved as the 
fish they dried and salted. We must re¬ 
member that all the time of Thoreau’s 
visit incidents of the Revolution were as 
close at hand as are Civil War memories 
to many of us today. It is likely that in 
Thoreau’s time the population of Barn¬ 
stable County was considerably larger 
than it is today. As a farming section 
the Cape did not impress the visitor in 
1S5Q. Around Eastham was a tract of 
land quite noted for corn production: 
The Pilgrims of Plymouth bought large 
quantities of corn from the Indians at 
this point. Crows and blackbirds were 
a great nuisance in the early years of 
Cape Cod farming. In 1667 the town 
of Eastham voted that every housekeeper 
should kill 12 blackbirds or three crows. 
In 1695 it was ordered that “every un¬ 
married man shall kill six blackbirds 
or three crows while he remains single ; 
as a penalty for not doing it, shall not be 
married until he obeys this order.” 
Thoreau saw the blackbirds still pulling 
the corn in 1850, and he naively remarks 
that “many men were not married, or 
many blackbirds were.” In those, old 
days, as now, town affairs on the Cape 
were settled in town meetings, where all 
voters came together and fought out their 
civil differences, and, if we may believe 
some of the reports, the discussions were 
not always as civil as they could have 
been. Yet this town meeting system was 
probably the best example of a pure 
democracy the world has ever seen and 
it gave great strength to the character 
of the New England people. 
***** 
Seventy-five years ago, if we may be¬ 
lieve Thoreau’s report, farming at the 
east end of Cape Cod was a very poor 
business. Yet it is interesting to note 
that the section around Eastham, once 
famous for corn production, is now equal¬ 
ly famous for growing asparagus. The 
(’ape Cod farmers have learned to find 
the spots of soil on their long sand bar 
best suited to special crops. There are 
noAV in a small circle around Eastham 
about 300 acres of asparagus, yielding 
each year not far from $100,000 in cash. 
In Thoreau’s time it is doubtful if that 
value of farm produce was grown on all 
the Cape east of Orleans. In 1850 one 
man was quite noted because he had 
grown 50 bushels of potatoes in one year. 
At the lower end of the Cape there is 
now a farm or ranch so large that, using 
a tractor, they plow furrows a mile long! 
We are told that at several times during 
her early history it was about decided 
to abandon Cape Cod as a farming sec- 
lion—giving it up to fishermen and 
wreckers, as it was thought a hopeless 
task ever to try to force this sand bar 
into competition with the richer and more 
easily handled lands in the West. There 
are two classes of New England Yankees, 
however. One is restless. He climbed 
over the mountains and made the western 
plains bloom like the rose. The other 
stayed at home with what seemed like a 
hopeless proposition, and turned it into 
a great success. For today on the sands 
of Cape Cod there are some of the most 
profitable farms and gardens to found 
anywhere. The original Cape Cod men 
did not, as a rule, go very far West. 
The roar of the ocean was too much a 
part of their lives. They plowed the 
sea, and every harbor in the world knew 
them. Farming with them was mostly 
a side line lightly attached to fishing or 
wrecking or deep sea sailing. Thoreau 
traveled for miles along the beach and 
over the sand hills with hardly the sign 
of a farm, and only a few wreckers walk¬ 
ing along the beach, hunting for wreckage 
driven in from vessels lost at sea. It was 
then estimated that more than 30 per 
cent of all the fuel used on the Cape was 
obtained from driftwood. For down, out 
of millions of streams, large and small, 
wood in all sizes, from great trees to 
splinters, came floating into the ocean, 
and thousands of ships broken up and 
scattered by wind and wave sent their 
fragments floating at the mercy of wind 
and tide. So that finally, the Cape Cod 
farmer of those days, might build his 
fire and warm his house and cook his 
food with the entire world contributing 
to his wood box. There might be a slab 
from a Canadian forest after its journey 
down the St. Lawrence and along the 
northern coast. That barrel stave once 
held wine from Portugal; that stick from 
an African jungle; this fine wood from 
the decoration of a great steamer, or 
that oak plank from the side of a slave 
ship. It was all cast up by the sea in 
order that the people in this wind-blown 
and sand-scarred farmhouse on Cape Cod 
might be warmed. As this world-con¬ 
tributed sea fuel snapped' and roared in 
the fireplaces, it must have told strange 
stories to those who sat by the fire. 
For in those old days there was hardly 
a family that did not have one or more 
members out on the ocean—above or be¬ 
low the waves—they knew not which! 
They tell us that the food of a nation or 
of a community has much to do with the 
character of the people. At the hotel in 
Provincetown where Thoreau stopped 
they offered him a rather monotonous bill 
of fare—a choice between fish hash and 
beans! Today the tourist at the modern 
hotel would have his choice of 100 ar¬ 
ticles of food, but it is questionable 
whether this large range of selection— 
from California grapefruit to New Zea¬ 
land mutton—gives him either stronger 
character or a more vigorous body than 
fish and beans—the staples of Cape Cod 
—and Thoreau says there was very little 
potato in the fish hash. In somewhat 
like manner I think the fuel of a people 
has much to do with their character and 
habits of thought. Imagine a modern 
family grouped around a steam radiator. 
Somewhere, down below, in the dark, is 
an iron box filled with coal—a fuel with 
nothing more romantic about it than the 
constant fight between organized labor, 
mine owners and railroads over costs, 
and the quarrels between father and 
mother over prices and economical use. 
Compare that family with one before a 
fireplace in a lonely Cape Cod farmhouse, 
long before telephones or radios had en¬ 
tered the dream stage. Chunks of wood 
which have floated in out of the great 
mysterious ocean are telling their adven¬ 
tures in roaring tongues of flame! I’ll 
warrant there were few family quarrels 
before those singing fires. They natural¬ 
ly helped make the Cape Cod man what 
he became—an inquisitive, imaginative, 
inventive and determined character—a 
man hard to harness, willing to stand, but 
unwilling to be hitched. There have been 
perhaps more new religious cults started 
or developed in Southeastern Massachu¬ 
setts than anywhere else in America I 
***** 
Thoreau in 1850 could see little or no 
hope for Cape Cod farming, but he 
thought that possibly there might come a 
time when a reasonable number of people 
might want to see the ocean badly enough 
to come and pay for the privilege! He 
could not grasp the idea that as wealth 
increased in this country it would accu¬ 
mulate more and more in the cities—thus 
creating a class of people who lack more 
and more the power of self-entertainment, 
so that they think they must pay cash for 
salt air, scenery and the satisfied feeling 
that someone else is serving them. _ I sup¬ 
pose it did not seem possible 75 years 
ago that such a class could arise in this 
country—at least large enough to change 
the character of farming. Yet I think it 
a conservative estimate to say that last 
year more than 100,000 visitors, or about 
four times the total population of Barn¬ 
stable County, came to Cape Cod during 
the Summer and spent more than $50 
each during their stay. This is what the 
old-timers could not foresee, but this great 
army of human seabirds has changed the 
industries of the Cape profoundly, and 
will change it more and more until in 
truth Cope Cod will be one of the best 
places to come back to. For example, 
Cape Cod beats the world in growing 
cranberries. You see the ponds and mead¬ 
ows of this fruit scattered all over the 
country. The chief office of the cran¬ 
berry is to help carry out a chemical re¬ 
action in the laboratory of human diges¬ 
tion. For the acids of the cranberry make 
the fat of the turkey digestible, so that a 
fat turkey from Texas and cranberry 
sauce from Cape Cod make a good-na¬ 
tured American, and that may be a fair 
illustration of the way the acid-like 
humor and shrewd sense of Cape Cod has 
worked in to make the fat places of the 
land worth while. In 1849 Thoreau found 
a farmer hauling seaweed for manure. It 
was after a storm, and great quantities 
of the weed had come upon the beach. 
About a mile away a ship had been 
wrecked, and dozens of people had 
drowned. They were being buried—cart¬ 
ed away to a little graveyard, and all the 
town people had turned out for the fu¬ 
neral. But this farmer, while he “had 
heard” about the shipwreck, and could 
see the long procession, had what he 
called more important work to do—haul¬ 
ing his seaweed home. Sea burials were 
well enough, but here was that from the 
sea which, when put into the soil, meant 
life. Bet others carry the dead—he cart¬ 
ed seaweed! I wish that man could come 
back this year and see some of these Cape 
farmers using a ton of fertilizer to the 
acre and plowing under great crops of rye 
and clover! There are patches of marsh 
land scattered along the shore. Some 
years ago the town of Wellfleet put up a 
dike to shut the salt water from hun¬ 
dreds of acres of this salt marsh. It has 
been handled much like a cranberry bed. 
Open ditches furnish drainage and two or 
three inches of sand are spread over the 
surface. Then two tons of lime per acre 
You Can Grow 
Scabby Potatoes 
if you want to. 
But you dorit 
have to. Just use 
Inoc-Sul 
It will positively overcome the scab organism 
and keep the crop clean , bright and marketable 
Inoc-Sul is dependable insurance against potato scab. It cleans 
up infected fields—it keeps uninfected fields clean. It is inexpensive 
and easily applied, requiring no special machinery. Broadcast by 
hand, fertilizer or lime broadcaster, or seed drill. 
Inoc-Sul strikes at the very root of the potato -scab evil—it 
overcomes the scab organism IN THE SOIL, not merely the scab on 
the seed, as does seed treatment. 
Furthermore, sulphur is one of the necessary plant foods. There¬ 
fore, Inoc-Sul may function as an important element of fertility. 
Inoc-Sul when correctly applied to the soil will absolutely be of 
no harm whatever to the potato crop, or any other crop. 
Soils seldom naturally contain too much sulphur, and are very 
apt not to contain enough. 
Write us today. We will without cost or obligation tell you all 
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dollars to you. 
TEXAS GULF SULPHUR CO. 
Desk B 41 East 42nd Street 
New York City 
Inoc-Sul is the best form of sulphur for any farm, use—dustcng 
seed, preserving manure, fertilizer, soil corrective and livestock. 
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this happen to 
your apples 
Kill the aphids before they have a 
chance to do serious damage to fruit 
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10 lb. tins, $13.50 
2 lb. tins, 3.50 
lb. tins, 1.25 
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A ten-pound tin makes 800 to 1100 
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When spraying for scab, codling 
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Buy from your dealer. If he cannot supply 
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Note — Hall’s Nicotine Sulphate is also 
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Hall Tobacco Chemical Co. 
212 Fifth Avenue, New York City 
r 
When you zvrite advertisers mention The R. N.-Y. and you’ll get a 
quick reply and a “square deal.” See guarantee editorial page. 
