E D I T O 
HYPERBOLE ON Tj'ORMERLY when one doubted the au- 
FARMS •i’ thenticity of a tale one made veiled 
allusions to its connection with the fish 
business—amateur let it be understood—and felt that a telling 
blow had been delivered against it. So the term has become a 
classification. We would urge a rival epithet with just a shade of 
difference in meaning—the back-to-nature yarn. We do not wish 
to imply that all the glowing stories of the return to the farm are 
fabrications—far from it—but we do wish to show that important 
considerations are neglected which by their omission completely 
change the color of the narration. The rosy portrayal of reaping 
a fat livelihood from five acres is misleading because it neglects 
the personal element, or the scale element, or banking on ideal 
conditions, fails to discount contingencies such as blight, bad sea¬ 
son, or inclement weather. 
There was a tale that stirred the imaginations of many by tell¬ 
ing how a farm was made to pay. It described a city-bred indi¬ 
vidual who without previous experience went to the country and 
cultivated his land until it yielded a rich return. The plantings 
and their dates were given, there were specific details of varieties 
and care. All this was beyond dispute—for experiment station 
methods. But the profits were figured in the terms of a small patch 
less than an acre, and the inference was that were the same plans 
carried out on a sizable truck farm the returns would be merely a 
matter of multiplication. In the first place, the scrupulous care 
that netted extraordinary results could not be given to any but a 
very limited area without a great increase in the cost of produc¬ 
tion necessitated by extra labor and farm machinery. Next, the 
products had not been actually sold, but were reckoned in terms 
of their market value at a point quite distant from where they 
were grown. Middleman’s charges, marketing expenses, and 
transportation were forgotten. Such discrepancies altered the 
story, and if any deluded individuals followed the sanguine in¬ 
structions they were doomed to dismal failure. The plan was out 
of scale. 
So run the other will-o’-the-wisp stories. They tell of results 
under ideal conditions, and the one who follows their directions 
finds that he is thwarted by insurmountable obstacles. Rain, 
drought, freezing weather, an off-season for his crop, make in¬ 
finite changes in the return. These things should be figured in by 
the man who looks hopefully to the country. What is more, the 
ever-present menace of a blight may change the credit balance to 
a heavy debit. This is not a pessimistic view of farming, but it is 
a caution to the one who rushes into it for a livelihood without a 
full knowledge of the extent of his undertaking. The farm stories 
are misleading also in their neglect of the personal element. They 
fail to make note of the fact that the novitiate farmer in the story 
is apparently as strong as a mule and has a capacity for fourteen 
hours of labor a day, and a bulldog tenacity of keeping at his work 
fair weather or foul. 
All these are considerations that we think are necessary where 
a man changes his occupation and takes up farming as a business. 
If a farm is bought simply as an investment in happiness, they do 
not weigh so heavily, but when livelihood and income are depend¬ 
ent upon the land, such warnings are vital. 
It is to clear away the mist of misapprehension in regard to 
farming as an occupation that we publish John Anthony’s story. 
The Eldorado seeker is still enticed to disappointment as he was 
in ’49. To-day the golden hope is a sinecure of broad lands sowed 
by scattering seeds to the wind and harvested with as little exer¬ 
tion as Lamb’s roast pig was eaten. But it was no such luxuriant 
garden waiting to be harvested that made so many Western fruit 
growers successful. It was persistent work, well and intelligently 
and vigorously applied. 
We think John’s actual experience as interesting as the 
imaginary farm tales, besides being a real test. The first year he 
had good luck and scientific methods told well. This last year 
was the so-called “off year’’ for apples, and it required resource¬ 
fulness to turn failure into success. He glosses over no hard¬ 
ships and shows what work had to be done. He spent time in 
learning essentials at the summer school of an Agricultural Col¬ 
lege. To get results it meant long hours and constant exertion. 
Such a story will be inspirational to the man who honestly wants 
to become a twentieth century pioneer, to emigrate back to the 
land, but it will shy off the dilettante farmer, the seeker for easy 
and large returns, and in so doing save many a disappointment 
and loss. 
SUGARING-OFF \X 7 ’HAT a pity it would be if the seasons 
TIME VV were lost to us, if life simply rolled 
on before the same background. To us the 
tropic’s perpetual summer sunshine would be as unbearable as the 
continual arctic ice. One does not grow old simply by the tale 
of years; one may often count his youth by them, so why urge 
that death's-head warning of the Omar school — Carpe diem. The 
seasons’ change, our one actual time marker, is not at all a 
melancholy event. Instead of sadly sighing: “Forty winters 
old,” there would be a joy in smiling: “Sixty springs young.” 
Everything that marks that change to spring is really welcome; 
worth cherishing. In other days each portent had its celebration 
apart from the grand festival of Spring’s arrival. To-day almost 
all the festival spirit is left to children while they are young 
enough not to know any better than to believe in Santa Claus or 
enjoy the Maypole dance. No, dear reader, we would not dare 
the eternal ignominy of the twentieth century’s direst curse “re¬ 
actionary!” by suggesting any revival of Nature festivals. What 
we were approaching was a Spring festival that pays — we are 
not at all idealistic — in cash. It is the time of Maple Sugaring. 
During those days when winter reluctantly retires step by step, 
often changing his mind and making ugly rushes back again to 
blow his frosty breath just upon the spot where the discarded 
camel’s hair was thickest; in those fretful, doubtful days of long¬ 
ing comes the sugar season. And when you are in the midst of 
it you forget awhile, to awake and find yourself plump in the 
lap of spring with new pleasures due. I scorn the scientific 
doctrine of the reaction of the body every seven years. One is 
born anew with the flow of the sap each year. That is Spring’s 
eucharist, the joyful celebration of the reawakening of life in 
Nature and in man. It gives a stir of new vigor to the woods 
that is reflected in the bodies of men in a more vigorous pulse 
beat, in a delight in muscular work. 
In the country they still have “sugaring-off” parties. The 
nights are wintry, but the fire drives away the chill, and there is 
a light-hearted joviality that no indoor good time ever permitted. 
To eat the sweet jackwax and stir maple sugar is an annual treat 
looked forward to and remembered. The excitement of wild 
games played in the sap bush where the fire cast strange shadows 
over the icy remnants of winter snow, when seen in recollection 
appears Olympian. Surely the quality and taste of ambrosia was 
surpassed by the delicacy of boiling sirup poured on snow. 
But it isn’t the delicious taste of the boiled sirup or the sugar, 
it isn’t the fascination of the night picnics that gives all the thrill; 
it is the magic time of the change in season. Even the men in the 
bush, working in the melted slush with the first warming sun 
above them, begin to feel it. Whether sap simply typifies this 
change or whether it infuses the spring vigor of nature, cannot 
be said, but it’s worth while experimenting, even if there is only 
one solitary sugar maple near you. 
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