Early spring work is cut down by half if a wheel-hoe is used. Harrowing is made easy—after plowing with the wheel-hoe plow the clods are broken up 
by attaching the cultivator tool 
Garden 
STAKING OUT A CLAIM IN A YOUNG FOREST—DREAMS AND DISILLUSIONMENTS — THE TOOLS FOR QUICK 
WORK—THE MYSTERIES OF THE WATER TABLE—SUCCESS IN A WHEEL-HOE GARDEN 
Warren H. Miller 
Part I — Taming the Wilderness 
F ROM the beginning of things I believe I have been a born 
farmer, which is a very different thing from being born a 
farmer; for I was raised in a fine, old Colonial town where every¬ 
body owned a big place, ten to fifteen acres; gardened, lawned 
and hedged, every foot of it under 
cultivation—a very different thing 
from the average farm. Land was 
cheap in those days, and living was 
cheap, so that people of moderate 
means could easily own a big place 
and raise enough on it to keep a man 
who did the gardening, looked after 
the horses and carriages, etc., in re¬ 
turn for his rent of the cottage and 
one-third the product of orchard and 
vegetable garden. Ours was one of 
the smallest of these places — four 
acres — yet, even we kept an old dar¬ 
key, who lived in the cottage at the 
foot of the third terrace, and was 
given his rent and the cultivation of 
that terrace in return for general gardening of the place and care 
of our stock. My particular job was the chicken and pigeon 
establishment, also all our hunting dogs, besides doing part of the 
weeding and planting of the vegetable garden, and I look back 
in wonder to-day at the efficient way 
in which those trusts were adminis¬ 
tered, for a boy of twelve; to say 
nothing of the numerous side-lines of 
my own—rabbits, guinea pigs, an 
aquarium, a reptile den—Lord knows 
what all—white rats and mice, too, if 
memory serves me correctly! 
Then, as I grew to manhood, came 
five years in Europe and fifteen years’ 
pioneer construction work as an elec¬ 
trical engineer, living in rented houses 
on small plots of ground, so that one 
hardly had time to accumulate so 
much as a dog before new construc¬ 
tion work necessitated moving again. 
But the yearning for a place of my 
In the original garden nothing but potatoes would grow, because 
it had been neither limed nor drained 
151 
