1190 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
September 13, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
Perhaps the most beautiful sight on the 
farm just now is the pumpkin field on the 
sloping hillside just above the spring. 
Under ordinary conditions one would nev¬ 
er look for beauty in a pumpkin. If 
there ever was a product of which it 
might be said “handsome is as handsome 
does,” popular vote would name the 
pumpkin. Of course the boy who carves 
some hideous face in the pumpkin shell 
and puts a lighted candle inside thinks he 
has something of beauty, or the hungry 
man who has a mate possessing that rare 
skill of blending sugar, pumpkin, milk, 
butter and flour into a good pumpkin pie 
will have brief visions of glory, but who 
ever thought of matching a pumpkin field 
with a rose garden? You might change 
your mind if you could stand in our lane 
and look up the slope in the morning just 
before the sun has fully dried the vines 
and killed the sparkle of the dew. You 
would see a mass of rippling green. The 
vines are of several shades of color, and 
the sweet corn growing between the hills 
shows still another shade. Scattered all 
through this shimmering mass are the 
dark yellow pumpkin flowers. The dew- 
drops sparkle like diamonds. Here and 
there are little patches of brown earth by 
way of contrast. It is a beautiful sight. 
T once heard Jacob Riis tell of how he 
invited a group of Italian children to 
spend a week or more on his farm. The 
Italians have had beauty and color con¬ 
trasts bred into them for many genera¬ 
tions, and these little children picked 
every squash flower they could find—not 
knowing that in thus gratifying their love 
of beauty they put an end to the practical 
value of a squash ! 
* * * * * 
I imagine we can all get a good lesson 
out of that, and particularly some of 
those educators w r ho, in their great de¬ 
sire to beautify what they call “the drab 
lives of country people,” carry their ideas 
too far and breed in the minds of their 
pupils whait I may call mental mongrels 
or mules. By that I mean a heritage of 
very close, narrow practical way of liv¬ 
ing. crossed on an education that is too 
artistic and poetical. I knew an old 
farmer who hired one of these impractical 
young men. They came to picking peaches 
and the young fellow, with his soul full of 
beauty and color, would stop with his 
basket half filled to stare at the beautiful 
crop—red and gold and white, showing 
against the dark green leaves. 
“Here, you !” shouted the farmer, “Get 
busy! Pick peaches! What are you 
mooning about? There’s a storm coming. 
If we don’t get this crop off today it will 
be lost!” 
“But they are so pretty,” said the 
young man. “It seems almost a shame to 
cat them !” 
“Well, ‘pretty’ won’t pay your wages 
or buy fertilizers. I'm not ashamed to 
handle the money they bring. That’s the 
way I support my family. A peach was 
made to eat. Get busy I” 
At noon the farmer talked it over with 
his wife and daughter. “Can you beat 
it? Henry stood stock still in the orchard 
just looking at the peaches. Hated to 
pick them because they were ‘so pretty. 
Say. that beats me to death !” 
lie expected his daughter to agree with 
him and laugh at this “moon calf,” but 
instead of that she said soberly : 
“Father, I wish you and Henry could 
make a little exchange. I wish you had 
some of his love of beauty. I wish you 
were not so color blind, and I wish Henry 
had more of your practical sense and en¬ 
ergy. Y T ou have both been educated in 
the' wrong way. Your training has been 
too narrow. Henry can see nothing but 
the beauty of a crop; you see only the 
utility—the money. You would both be 
better men if you could exchange just a 
little.” 
She spoke gently. Some of these chil¬ 
dren make the mistake of sneering about 
such things. Their “artistic” training 
seems to make them impatient. That 
farmer thought about it all the afternoon. 
After supper he sat out under the tree, 
still thinking about it as he smoked his 
pipe. Down by the gate below the barn 
Henry and the daughter stood looking off 
to the west. They were not talking —• 
they just stood and watched the sunset, 
as the red and pink flamed up in the eky 
and then slowly faded out. And some¬ 
how, though the farmer knew that Henry 
was neglecting his chores to play the part 
of star gazer, he made no protest, for 
somehow that glorious bank of color had 
a new meaning to him. It eeomed some¬ 
how like a human life flaming up in 
strong rich colors in its flush and pride, 
and then slowly fading away to a great 
peace as evening fell. 
* * * * * 
But it is not entirely the beauty of that 
field which pleases me. These brilliant 
flowers celebrate an industrial victory. 
This gently sloping hillside has always 
been my ideal for a strawberry field. 
What Marshall, Gandy and Howard 
would grow there! I tried part of it 
once and failed because the crab grass 
had taken possession of it, and there 
never was a strawberry that could hold 
its own with crab grass. You think you 
have the berries going right—and then ! 
Napoleon at Waterloo at the close of day, 
seated on his horse, raised himself in his 
stirrups and looked over the field. Be¬ 
hind the English army was a thick wood. 
Could be drive them into it, the identity 
of the army would be lost—and then ! It 
seemed like the crowning of his campaign, 
when suddenly a great mass of troops 
appeared on his right. Blueher had 
broken through. That is about the way 
our berries went in former years. This 
year we tried it again, very much, I sup¬ 
pose. as Napoleon would have done could 
he have come back from St. Helena and 
raised another army. But, as Kipling 
says: 
“How far is St. Helena from the field of 
Waterloo? 
A near way, a clear way, the ship will 
take you through, 
A pleasant place for gentlemen with 
little left to do, 
Morning never tires you till the after¬ 
noon.” 
In order to raise strawberries you 
must keep the Prussians away, and in 
this field the Prussians are crab grass. 
Napoleon lost Waterloo because Grouchy 
failed to act. May I say that Grouchy 
seems to have stood still—nursing some 
form of a grouch, and the only way to 
cure that is to dig it out by the roots. 
We plowed that field early, and harrowed 
it four times with a spring-tooth. At 
each round of the field the harrow teeth 
would be wound thick with grass roots. 
Y r et still they come. Finally this field 
was marked 3% ft. each way. Connec¬ 
ticut field pumpkins were planted in 
every other hill, thus making them 7 ft. 
apart. Then we planted Early Mam¬ 
moth sweet corn in the odd rows. Al¬ 
most before the field could be planted.the 
crab grass was back. It had had its 
own way for years, and now it came 
sneaking in underground confident of its 
power. We ripped through with the 
cultivator seven times before the pump¬ 
kin vines ran out into the rows and then 
we did a thorough job with hoes. There 
was no perfunctory scratching over the 
ground about this, but a thorough dig¬ 
ging. Every root and weed was dug up 
with the dirt shaken from it. But we 
have a breed or strain of crab grass that 
can put up a remarkable battle for life. 
It is said that you can dig up a root of 
it, shake it free from dirt, let it dry in 
the sun. then put it on top of a concrete 
fence post, and it will make its way to 
the ground and pull so hard through the 
soil that it will loosen the post. Bear in 
mind that I do not make that direct claim, 
but it has seemed quite probable in for¬ 
mer years after working all Summer at 
the job of slaughtering it. This crab 
grass root is used as a medicine. It 
would seem as if the New Jersey article 
would make the lame jump and the 
halt break their bridle! 
***** 
We dug these roots out and then 
drove through the field with a wagon 
and loaded on every weed we could find. 
There were many loads of them. They 
were piled high on a side hill where the 
wash from the hills has started to dig 
out a gully in the road until the stones 
are exposed. Let us see if these crab 
grass roots will accept the job of holding 
these stones together! But after all 
this work the pumpkin field is clear—as 
it never w r as before. A few weeds have 
come in, but they can be easily handled. 
The vines are green and strong, and you 
never saw such flowers. It. will be a 
race with the frost, for everything is late 
this year—including the corn—but the 
hot weather ought to carry us through. 
This soil will be in good shape for ber¬ 
ries next year. That’s one thing about 
crab grass. When it works in fully the 
soil is always rich in humus. In fact our 
Jersey crab grass is about the best hu¬ 
mus maker we have. Farmers hate and 
despise it, but when it works into an 
orchard after Summer cultivation it does 
great work. Many years ago The R. 
IT.-Y. conducted a “free seed distribu¬ 
tion”—sending out seeds of novelty each 
year. One year it distributed seed of 
Johnson grass. This is about first cousin 
to crab grass—making a heavy growth 
above ground, and very useful in many 
parts of the South. Some of our people 
planted this seed and it ran away from 
them. It made its way underground— 
all over the farm—and proved a great 
nuisance. In one case an elderly man 
had a poor farm which he was trying to 
cultivate. He was slowly starving to 
death on it. He seeded this Johnson 
grass and it ran all over his place—a 
terrible weed in his plan of farming. The 
old man quit in despair, but his son let 
the “weed” grow, bought sheep and cat¬ 
tle and made more by pasturing them on 
the Johnson grass than father ever did 
with all his hard work. In some parts 
of New England this crab grass has be¬ 
come a terrible curse—at least that is 
what farmers think as it runs in and 
possesses their land—but it leaves the 
soil better than before it entered. But 
someone says: “Why do you raise -these 
common pumpkins? If you want vines 
why not some high quality of melons?” 
Years ago melon growing was a great 
industry in this part of New Jersey. 
Vine diseases and competition have well 
nigh destroyed it. Melons come into the 
New York market all the way from 
South Africa to Canada in their season 
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