YOL LXXXTTT Published Weekly by The Rural Publishing Co., 
. 333 w „ 0th gf New york price Qne jjona,. a Year. 
Farming, Both 
NEW YORK. OCTOBER 18. 1924 
Ends of 
Entered as Second-Class 
Office at New York, N. Y. 
2, 1879, at the Post 
' of March 3, 1879. 
NO. 4817 
the C ountry 
WINTER VACATION—I think J. E. 
K. inquiring about farming both ends 
of the country, page 996, would bet¬ 
ter farm one end of the country well, 
while nature is with him; then shut 
up shop and spend the three or four months in the 
off season, as a vacation in the other end of the 
country. I think to the northern farmer there is 
no place quite equal to Florida for spending a Win¬ 
ter vacation, and to the Florida farmer the North 
looks good when apples and peaches are in season. 
Winter before last I went to Florida with the idea 
of looking into the possibilities of Winter farming 
there. The ocean bathing was great. The sunshine, 
the warmth, the balmy breezes were tine. No water 
pipes freezing, no stoves and furnaces for which to 
chop wood or buy coal; no snow, slush, mud or dirt 
to drive the flivver through after necessary groceries. 
Fine! But how about the Winter farming? 
VARYING CONDITIONS. — Well, farming is 
much the same in principle and in results in Florida 
as in the North. Occasionally one bumps into a 
farmer who has accumulated quite a little property 
and money. There are lots of them who have made 
a living and raised a nice family. Then, there are 
the failures, men too poor to farm properly, farm¬ 
ing land that is too poor, or too far from markets, 
or not suited to the crops raised. Florida has more 
than its share of poor land. The proven land close 
to markets is high in price, and scarce. When such 
land is bought it must he worked to the limit every 
month that the markets will take the product, to 
make it pay. Examples of such land are the San¬ 
ford and Bradentown sections, noted for their let¬ 
tuce and celery; or the Planty City .section, noted as 
the place where the bulk of Winter strawberries are 
produced. One thousand dollars an acre is not an 
uncommon price for land in such sections. The good 
land of Florida that can be bought reasonably is so 
far from the railroads, roads, or waterways that 
only a true pioneer would buy it if he had to work 
or live on it. 
HARD. LUCK.—The citrus industry of Florida is 
subject to the same kind of bump from the markets 
that the apple growers or the peach growers of the 
North get. This season an acquaintance of 
mine with a small grapefruit grove had T,- 
200 boxes of fruit which netted him 12% 
cents a box. The same man grew some tomatoes. 
They were beautiful. The market was strong, $2 
to $4 per crate at the packing house. lie was due 
to clean up some money on the crop. There must 
have been 5,000 crates in the field, lie picked 500 of 
them. Then came a rainy day, a warm, muggy night. 
The fruit spotted and turned brown almost over 
night—nail head rust had hit the field, and not an¬ 
other crate did he pick! His loss was between 
$1,100 and $1,200 on the crop. I was talking with a 
lad who had come from Illinois. He and his father 
brought some money with them. The first Winter 
they attempted to grow some tomatoes, but failed 
to fertilize properly and lost out. The second Win¬ 
ter they tried again, and succeeded in growing a 
nice crop; but just before they were ready to pick, 
a frost hit them. They were too poor to get back 
North. 
ANOTHER SIDE—On the other hand we visited 
Mr| Hartman and his 26-acre farm near Miami. He 
was originally a Pennsylvania farmer, but is very 
much wedded to Florida. Ilis articles have appear¬ 
ed in The R. N.-Y. from time to time. We saw liis 
fields red with berries in February. When there, 
he was selling his fruit for 57c per quart, getting 
the same for four quarts as we received for a crate 
or. our crop here in South Jersey this year. ’ In three 
seasons, he told us, he had netted $42,000 from the 
sale of strawberries, and doesn’t plant much over 
half of his 26-acre farm each season. That’s a good 
record for a farmer in any State, or in any line of 
farming; but he doesn’t rush North in the Summer, 
he stays right there to grow his plants for the fol¬ 
lowing Winter. We also visited a man from South 
Jersey, who, in the Miami tomato section is known 
as the “Tomato King.” He told us that Ills record 
for the 18 years he had beeu in the tomato business 
was as follows: Two years in which he just broke 
even; one year in which he went behind about $1,- 
100; and the other 15 in which lie had got ahead, 
one year to the tune of $30,000, and another year 
$18,000. lie has 100 acres, and farms about one- 
tliird of it in tomatoes as an early Spring crop each 
year. The other two-thirds of his land rests. He 
had tried the berry business but couldn’t make any 
A Full Wheelbarrow Load of Young Farm Life 
