1 JliIvJl/JlI iiL^l^Ju^ AND LIBERTY IIIIHilMIM 1 n LIBRARY ~K ANNEX 2 u u n f f fT i fl!!! ^ BOLTON HALL 552-1 M^7 Cornell IDlniverstt^ OF THE IWew IPorlft State College of agriculture ..•i^.Q, ^^-.V 3518 Cornell University Library S 521.H174 1907 Three acres and I'berly, 3 1924 000 946 230 • >i '.\1 i* MACMILLAN'S STANDARD LIBRARY THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY M^ Cornell University VB Ubrary The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924000946230 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY BY BOLTON HALL AUTHOR OF THINGS AS THEY ARK," ETC., ETC. ASSISTED BY R. F. POWELL Buperintendant of the Vacant Lot Cultivation in Philadelphia WITH AN INTRODUCTION By GEORGE T. POWELL OF THE AGRICULTURAL EXPERTS ASSOCIATION NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS L.L. copteight, 190t, By the MAOMILLAK COMPANT, Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1907. Reprinted April, July, 1907; March, 1908. Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. FOREWORD WE are not tied to a desk or to a bench; we stay there only because we think we are tied. In Montana I had a horse, which was hobbled every night to keep him from wan- dering; that is, straps joined by a short chain were put around his forefeet, so that he could only hop. The hobbles were taken oif in the morning, but he would stiU hop until he saw his mate trotting off. This book is intended to show how any- one can trot off if he wUl. It is not a text-book; there are plenty of good text-books, which are referred to here. Intensive cultivation cannot be studied in any one book. It shows what is needed for a city man or woman to support a family on the pro- THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY ceeds of a little bit of land; it shows how in truth the earth brings forth abundantly to satisfy the desire of every living thing. It is not necessary to bury oneself in the country, nor, with the new facilities of transportation, need we, unless we wish to, pay the extravagant rents and enormous cost of living in the city. A little bit of land near the town or the city can be rented or bought on easy terms; and mer- chandizing will bring one to the city often enough. Neither is hard labor needed; but it is to work alone that the earth yields her increase, and if, although unskilled, we would succeed in gardening, we must attend constantly and intelligently to the home acres. Every chapter of this book has been re- vised by a specialist, and the authors wish to express their appreciation of the aid given them, particularly by Mr. E. H. Moore, Arboriculturist in the Brooklyn De- partment of Parks; and Mr. H. V. Bruce, vi FOREWORD late Superintendent of the New York Cul- tivation of Vacant Lots; and to thank Pro- fessor W. G. Johnson of the Orange Judd Company, Mrs. Mahel Osgood Wright, and also Mr. Joseph Morwitz, of the German Democrat, for many valuable suggestions; also aU those from whom we have quoted directly or in substance. We have endeavored in the text to give fuU acknowledgment to aU, but in some cases it has been impossible to credit to the originator every paragraph or thought, since these have been selected and placed as needed, believing that all true teachers and gardeners are more anxious to have their message sent than to be seen delivering it. In truth, teaching is but another depart- ment of gardening. Practical points and criticisms from prac- tical men and women will be welcomed by the authors. Address in care of the pub- lishers. vii "Se that hires one garden (which he is able to look after) eats birds; he that hires more will be eaten by the birds. " — Hebrew Proverb. INTRODUCTION IN this book the author has not attempted so much to deal with the technique of agriculture, or to give instruction in its re- quirements, as to awaken active and earnest thought upon the social betterment of our rapidly increasing population. The prob- lems of the growing millions who are to find such adjustment as they can, favorable or otherwise, in our highly organized, com- plex, modern life, are among the most vital. The home is the basic foundation upon which must depend the stability of good government and the broadest liberty consistent with the best welfare of society. The movement of population is increasingly towards cities, which means for vast num- bers diminished opportunity for acquiring homes. THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Industrial development has been largely transferred from the country to the city, with the attendant results following the concentration and congestion of labor, whUe in our cities philanthropy is heavily taxed to meet the increasing demands of de- pendency. The country is so impoverished in labor that great difficulty is experienced in carry- ing on the work of agriculture. From this cause, production in some lines is being not only curtailed, but abandoned. Supplies of perishable products which should be pro- duced near to the markets where they are wanted, are grown long distances away and transported, thereby adding high cost to the consumer. The author has brought out clearly the value that is derived from intensive culture and intelligent methods given to small land holdings. The possibihties of support from the land for millions who are living anx- iously, and much of the time close to the INTRODUCTION line of dependency, is clearly shown by the excellent authorities to whom frequent ref- erences are made. The growth of the cities should be from healthful, natural causes. They do not need stimulus. They are of great value to the country, but the prosperity of the country is of vastly greater importance to the cities. Agriculture should receive the first con- sideration, for upon its prosperity is de- pendent the best and permanent development of aU other interests. Other industries should not receive encouragement to the injury of agriculture. When the land pays, neither its owners nor capital will desert it. Given untrammeled opportunity, agriculture will not only care well for it- self and for those intelligently engaged in it, but it wiQ give stability to aU other industries and pursuits. The present great need of the country is a change in the teaching of its rural schools. They teach nothing of the en- xi THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY vironment of the life that surrounds them, and generations of children are turned out of the schools as barren of knowledge of agriculture — in which many naturally would engage — as the soU, which, for want of greater knowledge in its management, has dispossessed many of its occupants and forced them into cities. City schools are far in advance in nature teaching, and they wiU be an important factor in the future in turning numbers in the city back to the country. The readers of this book will find value in pursuing the subject further and con- sulting the authorities, who are among the best known upon the subjects to which reference has been made, and if interest and inquiry are awakened in these very im- portant problems, the author will have ac- complished the object he had in view. Geohge T. Powell. Ghent, N. Y. XU TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I MAKING A LIVING— WHERE AND HOW The necessity of teaching better methods in agri- culture to relieve the problems of our day. The drift toward cities. Natural conditions. The possibilities of an acre — in potatoes. Large acreages a mistake. Labor and expense of culti- vating large areas. Cultivation contrasted with Bonanza farms. Small acreage farms in Japan, Denmark, etc., and what they produce. Small acreage in school gardens and vacant lots. Gentlemen farmers. City and country coming together. CHAPTER n PRESENT CONDITIONS America an agricultural country up to the Civil War. Attracted to the West by Government lands. South the centre of slave agriculture. Free land xiii THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY kept up wages. War and hard times — changed con- ditions. South crushed — Central West growing. Railways — ^Forcing people from the land to the cities — ^aided by competition of western land. Climax now ; must find remedy for alienation. Where is land idle? — in the East. Result of rail- road discrimination shown in values. First step is railroad control. Cause of relegation, railroad rates. Affects Pennsylvania and Ohio. Gross in- equalities in freight charges; Mississippi Valley bet- ter. Increasing market in South. Southern lands coming into use. These furnish opportunity of get- ting people to land. New fields. CHAPTER III HOW TO BUY THE FARM Principles. Points. Low and high-priced land. Conservative investment. Suburban lands. Real es- tate agents aid — ^unexplored opportunities. CHAPTER IV VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION Lessons for the intensive cultivator — of poor land. The effect upon physical, mental, and moral health — xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS illustrated. A farm educator — in voluntary co- operation. Appreciation by railroads. In Europe. School gardens. Wonderful pro- duction. Your opportunity. CHAPTER V RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED Overproduction not to be feared. Dr. Engel's "law" of Scientific farming. Fallacy of this. The information needed as to prospects. Eastern or western land. The area required. A beginner's ex- perience. Necessity of intelligence and personal application. How to use a small area. The poet's "httle farm." The returns from small acreages. In the United States — in Scotland — in France. Stand- ards of yields needed. CHAPTER VI WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE Truck — ^the most advanced farming experience. Time required to work an acre. Product of an acre. United States instances in various places. Average crops. Product of an acre in specialties. Good products compared with averages. A living and XV THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY CHAPTER VH SOME METHODS Safety in diversified crops. When to plant. Times for selling. Realizing cash. Cultivation in rows. Companion crop plan. Cultivation raises price of your land. Profits. Produce in Europe. CHAPTER VIII THE KITCHEN GARDEN For domestic use. Location : treatment. Begin in fall. Size and arrangement. Fruit. Reasonable results. Cost and profit. CHAPTER IX TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT Implements needed and cost. How* to care for them. Books as a part of the outfit. Bucolic advice inefficient. Must get our own experience. Special- izing. Seed. Preparation of land. Thoroughness. CHAPTER X ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL Small capital can compete with large. Manure. Commercial fertilizers. We waste and then buy. xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS r j' Cost — and increase of returns. Soil inoculation^— /t" its future — examples. Irrigation. Use of water abroad — prospects for the United States. Sewage utilization better than irrigation. Cultivation is ir- rigation. "The American desert." Dry farming, and its new crops. Spraying. How much money is necessary. Tropics not so good a field as home. Facilities here. Available lands attracted first development. The markets. CHAPTER XI HOT BEDS AND GREENHOUSES An early start. How to make simple hot beds. An old-fashioned way. Artificial heat. Use of frames. Instances of production — ^returns. The best greenhouse — a substitute. Estimated cost. Methods of _ heating. CHAPTER XII OTHER USES OP LAND Poultry and its difficulties as a ' business — ^the reason. Profitable on a small scale. Ducks — growing in favor — don't need a pond. Belgian xvii THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY hares — decadence of the business. Pigeons. Bee- keeping and the returns. Small capital required. Yield. Labor and area required. Method — ^re- sults — ^how to start. Mushrooms in America. Better done in Europe. Where grown. Causes of failure. A little land for " pleasure. CHAPTER Xni FRUITS Specializing or diversifying. Money in the best. Apples, conditions. Peaches, grapes, plums, etc. Yield of cherries, currants, etc. Strawberries. Animal free lunchers. Wild berries. Nuts. CHAPTER XIV FLOWERS Popular flowers: glass. The capital needed. Shipping. Chances of success. A woman's violet farm — its methods — enemies. Chrysanthemums. Pop- pies. Street sales of flowers ; common flowers. Orchids. Ferns. Shrubs, etc. Bulbs. The prospects. xviii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Xy DRUG PLANTS Gathering wild drugs. Scarcity of some. Gin- seng. Difficulties of growing these plants. Pre- paring them for market — ^roots, leaves, flowers. Selling. Demand and prices — for various sorts. New branches. Edible weeds. CHAPTER XVI NOVEL LIVE STOCK Frog culture — product and value. Carp — ease of raising. Bass; how raised. Pheasants — ^bred like poultry. Home birds. Table — Snails — treat- ment. Silk worms — methods. Dogs. Cats a better venture. Wild fauna — for our own eating. Hunting skins. Raising "wild" animals. Foxes, etc. CHAPTER XVII WHERE TO GO Near the market — for intensive cultivation. Swamps or worn-out farms profitable. Oppor- tunities in "York State" — descriptions — prices — instiuices. Wages there. Long Island — opening xix THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY up for cultivation — character, capacities. Openings in New Jersey — abundance. Soils — ^uses. Cheap land. Exceptional transportation-facilities. In Dela- ware — availabihty: for fruit. Land coming into market. Soils — description — ^wages. Arresting fruit pickers. Fauna. In Maryland: Bureau of Immigration. Varied types of land — productivity. Prices at canneries. Tobacco land. Virginia — changed aspect. Attrac- tions to acre cultivators, fertile soU. Transportation. Produce — ^instances. New England — some of the cheapest lands. Availability. CHAPTER XVni CLEARING THE LAND The axe. Don't destroy recklessly. Shade. Stump extracting. How it has been done. Good management. Expense account — saving. Product. Hemp as a weed extirpator. Croats also. CHAPTER XIX HOW TO BUILD Start cheaply. Tents — shacks — cost. A log house — details. The American Bungalow — descrip- tion and cost. Advantages. A finer house — at a low price — details. Ready-made houses. XX TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER XX BACK TO THE LAND The landless man. Corporate aid — still new to the farmer. A change coming. To supply small farms on a large scale. Flan and prospects. Advantages. The present obstacles to getting farms. Necessity of keeping families in the coun- try. Buying farm tracts to sell at retail. Texas' plan. CHAPTER XXI COMING PROFESSION FOR BOYS Authorities. Country life for children. The natural bent. A boy's own farm, his instruction. Growing facilities. Opportunities, as teachers and experts. Their influence. Rewards of pre-eminent excellence. "Murray's fools." The needs of the farmer. Discoveries and their opportunities — examples. Experimentation. Fancy potatoes — for fancy grow- ers in England. Value of fine seed — of fine education in farming. A clergyman's refuge in farming — ^results. The rewards of labor and thought put into land. zxi THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY APPENDICES Statistics of yields from small areas. Instances of products. Bam yard chickens. List and prices of best books. Cost of low priced dwelling. Tables of planting. INDEX TTll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS OPP. PAGE " Three Acres and Liberty " . . Frontispiece Harvesting Prosperity . 20 A Successful Farmer . 45 Transplanting Rice in Japan . . 82 A Successful Rose Grower . 250 A Deserted Farm .... . 300 Front of Portable House . . 367 Rear of Portable House . . 369 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY CHAPTER I MAKING A LIVING— WHERE AND HOW BY thought and courage, we can help ourselves to own a home, surrounded by acres of fruit and vegetables, flowers and poultry, and learn the best methods so as to ensure success. In olden times anyone could "farm," but it is necessary to-day to teach people to obtain a livelihood directly from the earth. Scientific methods of agriculture have re- vealed possibiUties in the soil that make farming the most fascinating occupation known to man. People in every city are longing for the freedom of country life, yet hesitate to enter into its liberty because no one points the way. Most sociologists are agreed that the great problem of our day is to stop the THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY drift of population toward the cities. See- ing the overcrowding, the want and misery of our great towns, the philanthropist chimes in with "Get the people to the country, that is the need." But there is no such need. Man is a social animal, he naturally goes in flocks, he earns more and learns more in crowds. To transport him to the country, even if he would stay, which happily he won't, would be to doctor a symptom. As in ty- phoid, what is needed is not to suppress the fever, that is easy, but to remove the cause of it. It is not the growth of the cities that we want to check, but the needless want and misery in the cities, and this can be done by restoring the natural condition of living, and among other things, by showing that it is easier to live in comfort on the outskirts of the city as producers, than in the slums as paupers. We know already that the natural and 4 MAKING A LIVING healthy life is, that in the sweat of our faces we should eat bread. We observe that everything we eat or use or make comes from the earth by labor; but no one knows how abundantly the Mother can supply her children. It is well said that no man yet knows the capacity of a square yard of earth. The farmer thinks that he has done well if he gets a hundred and fifty or two hun- dred bushels of potatoes from an acre; he does not know that others have gotten 1,284 bushels.' Let us realize what an acre means. An acre is a square about 209 feet each way, 4,840 square yards of land. A New "'Mr. Knight, whose name is well known to every horti- culturist in England, once dug out of his fields no less than 1,284 bushels of potatoes, or thirty-four tons and nine hundreds weight (about 34 bushels to the ton), on a single acre; and at a recent competition in Minnesota 1,120 bushels, or thirty tons, could be ascertained as having been grown on one acre." (P. Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories and Work- shops," page 114.) 5 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY York City avenue block is about 200 feet long from house corner to house corner. It has eight city lots 25x100 in its front; about double that space (17 2-5 lots) makes an acre. An ordinary one-horse cart holds twenty bushels, so then a fuU crop of potatoes from that space would fill 56 carts. To raise potatoes as an ordinary farmer raises them, requires him to go over the ground not less than a dozen times, plow- ing, harrowing, marking, planting, cultivat- ing, three times weeding, three times for bugs, and digging; it would pay him to go over it much oftener. If he plants his rows of potatoes three feet apart, to aUow for horse cultivation, he has 69 rows of 200 feet each; which makes him walk at least thirty-three miles over each acre. If he has a twenty-acre lot in potatoes, he walks each year more than 650 miles over the field and gets, let us say, 150 bushels of poor potatoes per 6 MAKING A LIVING acre, or 8,000 bushels oflf his twenty-acre field. Now suppose he cultivates the soil, in- stead of just "raising a crop," and gets 600 bushels of fine potatoes to the acre, he need plant only five acres, walk only 200 miles, and, because his potatoes are choice and early, get many times the price that his pedestrian neighbor gets.^ To cultivate is to watch the soil as you would watch your cooking and to tend the crop as you would tend your animals. If an ordinary farmer rents 60 acres at $5.00 per acre, a moderate rent for good land, he pays out in cash $300, besides farm wages. If he buys it, his interest and taxes will amount to nearly as much, but if he tills but five acres intelligently, he can get as much out of it as out of an ordinary farm, and even if his rent be as '"We see that it is infinitely easier to grow 200,000 lbs. of feed on one acre than to grow them on ten acres." (P. Kro- potkin, "Fields, Factories and Workshops," page 87.) 7 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY high as $30 per acre for well situated land, he is $150 to the good; besides, doing the work himself, he has no drain of capital for wages. Large barns and shelter for help being unnecessary, he can live in a cheap shack tiU he accumulates enough for proper buildings. Many of the successful vacant lot farmers live in a tent or in shanties made of old boxes and such like. Of course, if we have the knowledge and ability and the capital and can give it the attention, it is more profitable to cultivate on a large scale than on a small one, be- cause in that case each worker necessarily produces more than he gets as wages — ^and we pocket the difference. Most American farmers are using land that somebody ought to pay them a bonus for working, or they must come out of the httle end of the horn. They get poor or poorly situated land, because it costs less, and then put three or four hundred 8 MAKING A LIVING dollars' worth of labor a year into the land and take out two or three hundred dollars' worth of crops. The farmer thinks he must have big fields to feed his cattle, and that he must have cattle to keep the big fields fertilized, so he raises hay. In that he makes two mistakes; hay, hke most other low priced crops, is risky — the cost of harvesting is high and the margin of profit small. A week of wet weather at cutting time or the impossibihty of getting enough men and machines in the week when it should be cut, may make a loss. But the scientific dairy man does not take that risk, nor let his cattle use up this fodder by wandering over the fields in search of tid-bits of grass or clover, or, goaded by the flies, trampling more grass than they eat and wasting their manure. He keeps the cows in cool sheds, feeds them on cut fodder and saves every ounce of the manure. 9 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY The modern cow is a ruminating machine for producing milk and cares for and needs little exercise. To exploit the cattle as employers exploit the factory hands, he gives the cows a cool, shady place and food, and they stand there aU day long to their profit and his.^ Although we can feed a cow on less than an acre hy raising forage crops, she needs to be milked every day at regular 'United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 22 says ^— "The New Jersey Experiment Station has been conducting a prac- tical trial in soiling dairy cows for a number of years past, and finds that complete soiling is entirely practicable, i. »., that green foliage crops may serve as the sole food of the dairy herd, aside from the grain ration, without injury to the animals and with a considerable saving in the cost of milk, "Under the soiling system a large number of animals can be kept upon a given acreage, and by allowing open-air exercises in a large yard or pasture the practice has been demonstrated as entirely feasible for dairy animals. "One acre of soiling crops produced sufficient fodder for an equivalent of 3% cows for six months. Rye, corn, crimson clover, alfalfa, oats and peas, and millets have been found to furnish food more economically than any other green crops in that locality. A grain ration was always fed in addition to the soiling crops." 10 MAKING A LIVING hours, and the milk, as well as the cans and the cow, need to be cared for — and she can not wait. The stock-raiser has a different propo- sition; he needs fields and grass; but if time and available labor is limited, we had better specialize on the garden — ^unlike the farmers. The farmers are not to blame that they do not usually cultivate the land intelh- gently. They are mostly cut off from the educational advantages of the cities by dis- tance and by bad roads. Usually, that is because, desirable land being held at speculative prices, they are forced to places where the farm itself is worth less than the good improvements on it cost. Sometimes it is because, also, the land is poor or worn out; more often because it is thoughtlessly managed, nearly always be- cause the land-himgry farmer has taken ten times as much land as he needs for farming. In the hope of a rise that does 11 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY not come, nearly all have bought more land than they can take good care of with limited capital and scarcity of help. In addition, the farms have held out such poor prospects of fortune that the smarter and more enterprising boys and girls have left them for the towns, leaving behind the duller and more conservative to the mercy of the railroads and other monopolies. What wonder, then, that the overworked and struggling farmer finds little chance to study, or to investigate and invest in fer- tilizers or even in modern methods of agriculture. No wonder farming does not pay when a "farmer" means a stupid man with neither training for, nor knowledge of, his business. Those who have the knowledge seldom have the experience and those who have the experience seldom have the knowl- edge. The bonanza farms of the West are other samples of great areas of the most 12 MAKING A LIVING productive land in the United States being used most unscientifically. By the methods used, the land produces less per acre than land in the East which is not so good. Accordingly, we find that the bonanza farm plan, where great areas of wheat are worked by machines with labor employed only in the seed time and harvest, is rapidly breaking up. As the land becomes valuable and is taxed, such wasteful, whole- sale methods do not pay as well as it pays to rent or sell the land to farmers, who each for themselves attend to details of the business. Consequently, most of those farms are being sold off. The whole amount of wheat ever raised on them, however, is small compared to the rice, millet and wheat raised in China, India and Russia, and is insignificant compared to the amoimt of produce grown on the myriad httle farm plots.^ "The average extent of land tilled by *A comparison of productions as taken from the 12th 18 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY one family in Japan does not exceed one hectare" (2.471 acres), less than two and a half acres. ("Japan in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," page 89. Pub- lished by the Department of Agriculture and Commerce of Japan.) "Farm households contain on an average 5.8 persons, of whom two and a half per- sons per family may be regarded of an age capable of doing effective work." "So that here we have more than one person working on each acre and each acre supporting more than two persons, notwith- standing that their 22,000,000 tenant farmers United States Census in the bonanza fann states shows that the yield of wheat was Minnesota 14%bu. per acre North Dakota 13% bu. per acre South Dakota, 10% bu. per acre Nebraska 10 bu. per acre while the following states show Connecticut 33 bu. per acre Rhode Island 31 bu. per acre Vermont 19 bu. per acre New York 18 bu. per acre 14 MAKING A LIVING pay sometimes four-fifths of their product as rent." (Same, page 103.) Denmark, one of the best agricultural countries and probably one of the happiest communities on earth, has 1,900 farms of 250-300 acres 74,000 farms averaging 100 acres 150,000 farms averaging 7 to 10 acres 1,050 co-operative dairies, and so on. And so impressed has the ruling class there become with the advantage of this that the Government wiU supply the poor worker nine-tenths of the means necessary to buy a small farm. Says Kropotkin, "the small island of Jersey, eight miles long and less than six miles wide, still remains a land of open field culture; but, although it comprises only 28,707 acres (nearly 45 square miles), rocks included, it nourishes a population of about two inhabitants to each acre, or 1,300 inhabitants to the square mile, and there is not one writer on agriculture who, 15 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY after having paid a visit to this island, does not praise the well-being of the Jersey peasants and the admirable results which they obtain in their small farms of from five to twenty acres — ^very often less than five acres — ^by means of a rational and in- tensive culture. "Most of my readers will probably be astonished to learn that the soil of Jersey, which consists of decomposed granite, with no organic matter in it, is not at all of surprising fertility, and that its climate, though more sunny than the climate of the British Isles, offers many drawbacks on ac- count of the small amount of sun heat during the summer and of the cold winds in spring."^ '"The successes accomplished lately in Jersey are entirely due to the amount of labor which a dense population is putting on the land; to a system of land-tenure, land-transference and inheritance very different from those which prevail else- where; to freedom from State taxation; and to the fact that communal institutions have been maintained down to quite a recent period, while a number of communal habits and customs 16 MAKING! A LIVING In a small plot the character of the soil is of little consequence. We hear of one garden in New York City on the roof of a big building where the janitor smuggled up the needed soil in baskets. The school gardens in New York City, some in a space as small as a hearth rug, one yard by two, show how to use a very small patch of land to the best advantage. "Some of the cultivators of city lots on Long Island who kept count of the num- ber of days they worked, show the surpris- ing conclusion that they earned, not farm wages (seventy-five cents a day with board and lodging for the worker), but skilled mechanic's wages (four dollars per day) for every working day; as, for instance, a of mutual support, derived therefrom, are alire to the present time." (P. Kropotkin, "Fields, Factories and Workshops," page 109-110.) "It will sufSce to saj that on the whole the inhabitants of Jersey obtain agricultural products to the value of 5350 to each acre of the aggregate surface of land." (Same, page 113.) 17 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY stone-cutter, assisted by his two boys, worked fifty hours and made $120.23." ("Cultiva- tion of Vacant Lots, New York," page 12) ; and four city lots is a very httle farm. But though one may not own even a little farm, almost anyone who wants to can have a home garden — ^it needs but a small plot of land. Nor need we be dis- couraged because acquaintances who play at gardening tell us that their vegetables cost them more than if they bought them. They naturally would, with thoughtless methods of cultivation, with the selection of crops and the purchase of seeds left to an uneducated man who does all his work the way he saw his grandfather do it. Nor are we to be discouraged even by the "gentleman farmer" who runs a model farm, a model of how not to do it, for, notwithstanding its large capital, it seldom pays. I am passing such a farm now as I write in the train — ^it is surrounded by a 18 MAKING A LIVING cut stone wall. Do you suppose the owner's business would pay if it were run in the same way that his farm is run? We know the story of the white sparrow to find which would bring luck to the farm — but it was out only at daybreak; the farmer got up each morning to find the sparrow and found a lot of other things to attend to, which did bring luck to the farm. The time is not far distant when the builders of homes in our American cities wiU be compelled to leave room for a garden, in order to meet the requirements of the people. In the mad rush for wealth we have overlooked the natural state, but we see a healthy reaction setting in. With the improvements in steam and electricity, the revolutionizing of transportation, the cheapening of the telephone, it is becoming possible to live at a distance from our places of business. May we not expect in the near future to see one portion of our 19 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY cities devoted entirely to business, vsdth the homes of the people so separated as to give light, sunshine, and air to all, besides a piece of ground for a garden suflScient to supply the table with vegetables? You raise more than vegetables in your garden: you raise your expectation of life. Life belongs in the garden. Do you remember — ^the first chapters of Genesis show us our babyhood in a garden — ^the garden that all babyhood remembers, and the last chapter of the Apocalypse leaves us with the vision of the garden in the holy city, on either side of the river, where the trees yield their fruits every month and bear leaves of universal healing. Just so will it be in our holy cities of the future — the garden will be right there "in the midst." 20 CHAPTER II PRESENT CONDITIONS UP to the Civil War and for some years after, our people were almost wholly agricultural. National activity con- tented itself with settling and developing the vast areas of the public lands, whose virgin richness cried aloud in the wilderness for men. The policy of the government, framed to stimulate rapid occupation of the public lands, had attracted hordes of settlers over the mountains from the older states, and immigration flowed in a steady stream into the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. A system had grown up in the South almost patriarchal, based upon cultivation by slave labor of enormous areas devoted exclusively to cotton. In the North, New 21 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY England had developed some few centers of industry, drawing their support from the manufacture of the great Southern staple. New York, Boston and Philadel- phia were growing as outlets for foreign commerce, but as yet manufacturing flourished but feebly and in few localities. Such manufacturing and commercial en- terprises as existed had been laboriously buUt up by long years of honest dealing. The free lands of the government, by giv- ing laborers an alternative, kept up wages, forcing employers to bid against each other for labor; and monopoly thus being impos- sible, individual equahty was the rule. The mineral resources of Pennsylvania and Ohio were aU but unsuspected and the calm of a people devoted to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture rested over the country. RaUroads were few and inefficient; tele- graph lines but in their infancy. Inter- course among the people, outside of a nar» 22 PRESENT CONDITIONS row fringe on the Atlantic coast, was cumbersome, and impeded by many ob- stacles. Primitive conditions everywhere pre- vailed, and communities brooded in silence, growing stragglingly in sluggish indiffer- ence, content with coarse food and coarser living. Such, in general, were the conditions up to 1861. Then came the storm of shot and shell, the rain of blood, the elemental rage of passion called the Civil War. There was a total upset of business. Such periods of hard times as had occurred prior to that time had been caused by the tinker- ing of imtrained minds with the money system or by land speculation, and not by lack of access to the riches of nature. After four years the people awoke, as from a nightmare, to find the old life swept away forever. In the South, the Confed- erates, bitter and sullen, groping amid the ruins of their institutions, sought to find some substitute for the agricultural despot- THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY ism exercised for generations by the old slave-holding families. In the East, the first families of the Revolution, secure in their pre-eminence, assumed again the manu- facturing-banking-social prestige. The far West was stUl almost unknown, and re- mained in possession of the buffalo and the Indian. Settlers poured, in increasing num- bers, on to the unappropriated lands still left in the states of the central West, and the center of political power shifted rapidly to this fertile region. Already men of keen insight foresaw a time when oil, timber, coal and iron must become the stay of a vastly expanding industrial system, and bent their energies to secure the chief sources of supply. From the nature of their work the men who built railways first became aware of the riches of nature, and aided by an enormous public sympathy with their efforts, mon- opolized aU the natural opportunities of value. Coupled with industrial development 24 PRESENT CONDITIONS was the gradual appropriation of the land. The time soon arrived when the late comers either stayed in the manufacturing centers at the railway terminals or were pushed farther and farther away from the centers. As the land-owning famihes multiplied, the young men were confined to the same choice. Forced off the land, the tendency has been to crowd the brainiest blood of America into the cities. In addition, the competition of the new Western lands, brought into use by railway development, has exiled the youth of New England, who found in their rocky acres no incentive to toil. They, too, joined the ever increasing flow to the cities, and entered into the savage competition of our great towns. In our time the pendulum has swung to its extreme. At every depression of business, armies of the unemployed perish in sight of the land they abandoned in the hope of a brighter future. Their children have forgotten the traditions of 25 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY the soil, and the energies of our people must now be concentrated to reverse the aimless tide of human sufferers, which from habit continues to flow city-ward, and to send it to repeople the silent places whence it came. The fight wiU not be easily won. Changes in the national land policy are im- perative. To give one generation privileges which enslave aU who succeed it, is in- tolerable and win not be permanently en- dured. It is easy to determine upon a policy in the quiet of the study; different is the problem of applying a comprehensive scheme to repeople the idle land. In the first place, where is the idle land? In aU parts of our country it exists in abundance. Al- most every state in the Union has lands which either have never been alienated, or which have reverted to the state through non-payment of taxes. In the East, par- ticularly, the competition of Western lands, aided by discriminating freight rates, now 26 PRESENT CONDITIONS SO notorious, has resulted in the abandon- ment to the mortgagees of vast areas in New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and to some extent in New Jersey and Delaware. Declining fertility and exorbitant and oppressive transportation charges have helped to keep these lands out of use, and they now lie idle and neglected, to excite the wonder of the social and economic student. To use the abandoned lands of the East, equal rates on agricultiu"al products is a basic necessity. The first step, now well under way, is railway control by the Government. Equal access to transportation is as essential as equal access to land, for transportation is indeed an attribute of land. Extending the inquiry westward, the coal and oil areas of Pennsylvania and Ohio are practically all in a few hands. The original fertility of the farming areas of these states, together with the fact that THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY ihey have been producing for only about a century, has enabled them to hold then- own until recently, but now only the best located tracts are in maximum production, and this can be maintained only by the most advanced agricultural science. In spite of greater advantages, the crowded cities and deserted coimtry districts are beginning to repeat in the fertile alluvial valleys of the interior, the tragic story of the East. In the Mississippi valley, conditions seem better. Values of farming lands are in- creasing rapidly; the farms are rich and growing richer; food products are cheap and abundant; certain staples are produced in enormous quantities and sent to feed the cities of the East and the industrial popu- lation of Europe. The railroads transport these products nearly one thousand miles for the same prices as they charge in the East for transporting them one hundred miles. Wealth, activity and political power S8 PRESENT CONDITIONS concentrate at the inlet and outlet of the railway funnel, leaving vast areas of un- used and unusable land between the ter- minals. Access to markets determines value. That is why the favored lands of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin, one to two thousand miles from market, have risen in value to as high as two hun- dred dollars per acre, and the lands of New England, New York, and New Jersey go begging at ten to fifty dollars per acre, unless they lie within the artificial pros- perity of the cities. Farther west in the irrigated regions of Colorado and Utah, restricted areas are held for special fruit crops, at prices rang- ing from three hundred to two thousand dollars and up, per acre. But here, again, monopoly, now a monopoly of natural opportunity, is a factor in creating prices; on this, however, the vast irrigation pro- jects of the government, bringing into use larger and larger areas of these favored S9 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY lands, may be expected to exercise a tem- porary check. In recent years all the timber areas of the South have been brought into use, fol- lowing the breaking up by poverty or death of the land-owning families who held the great Southern estates up to and after the War. This tendency has recently become very marked. Deprived of slave labor, the younger generation of well-born whites in the South has turned its attention to such use of their lands as would pay. Cotton and tobacco generally, and wheat in Vir- ginia and Maryland, has so exhausted the natural fertility of the soil, that years of crop rotation with liberal use of nitrogen gathering plants, such as the clovers, and alfalfa, have been necessary to estabUsh a basis upon which a diversified cropping will pay. The willingness of the Southern planters to sell their lands, and so to release them for intensive cultivation, has partly turned SO PRESENT CONDITIONS the tide of immigration from the Eastern ports to the South, and the market garden system is reaching increasing areas. The development of factories to make cotton fabrics and to utilize the formerly wasted cotton seed by turning it into meal for cattle and other animals, as well as into various food products, such as cotton-seed oil, cottolene, etc., has stimulated the use of the waste land around these budding factory centers, thus tending to encourage intensive use of small, weU located tracts. With a climate much milder and more equable than that of the Northern states, with a potential fertility of soU, equally great under proper management, the South is making greater strides than any other part of the country. The foregoing shows that in every sec- tion opportunities of getthig the people to the land exist. Where a man should go is determined by a variety of things. If he be a newly arrived immigrant used to land SI THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY work in Southern Europe, he would find his best chance in the South; if a German or Russian, or from any of the Northern European countries, he would find the beet- sugar sections of Michigan, Colorado or CaUfornia more to his liking; if American born, without much knowledge of out-door work, and feehng the need of social life, the cheap farms of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and New England would prob- ably be most attractive. What can be undertaken with good pros- pects of success, wiU be outlined in the following chapters. 8g CHAPTER III HOW TO Birr THE FARM BEFORE the purchase of the land for a home in the country, some con- sideration ought to be given to probable increase in land values. Even if you are primarily interested in your early sales of produce, you will not object to reaping an additional profit from the presence of other people. Inasmuch as density of population de- termines land values, it follows that vacant land near a large city at $100 per acre may be cheaper than similar land at a dis- tance would be at $10 per acre. If you buy real estate, you become a silent partner who does nothing, but takes the most of the profits of the business of others. Some persons see so clearly that money THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY is often easily gotten by investing in land, that sometimes they make mistakes, in try- ing to get in. It is as easy to be a lamb in the real estate market as it is in the stock market. Foresight, judgment and experience or luck, are essential to success in real estate dealing, but help, at least in keeping out of danger, may be had by following a few simple rules, if one can command a little capital, borrowed or owned. The following points, suggested by a professional land shark, will certainly be of interest and possibly of profit to the intending buyer. I believe myself that they contain the whole philosophy of land specu- lation. For a sure profit buy low-priced land, keeping as near the "raw material" as pos- sible; high-priced property is risky and expensive to carry. An acre which costs one or two hundred dollars, or ten dollars per lot, win cost but six to twelve dollars 31 HOW TO BUY THE FARM per year to carry and half a dollar for taxes, and if a stable does come next you, why, you can sell your land for a blacksmith shop. Besides this, a ten-dollar lot, if restricted for residence or available for business, often advances to $100 in a year; one good house which someone else buUt near it will raise its value that much. If the land is high priced, see that there is some kind of a building on it; even a shanty wiU bring in enough or save enough to pay the taxes; so you wlU have that working for you whilst you are away. If possible, buy at auction and of repu- table people who are not boomers, or at least buy at forced sale; that is how real estate is sold when it must be sold. Choose lots level with the curb and on high ground, lest the expense of grading and sewering eat up your profit. Keep in mind that in buying land for speculation one really buys the opportunity; 35 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY to tax other people, by taking part of their earnings in the shape of rent or price. Do not then be deluded by boom schemes in inaccessible or desolate places; choose rather that land which in the natural course of events others must have in order to work or to live. Home buying in smaU communities is safer than in the outskirts of a large city, because public improvements are much less costly. If you put $500 in a $5,000 home and carry the balance on mortgage, an as- sessment of $1,000 for streets or sewers, which helps the vacant lots, wiU probably put you out of business. Whether for use or speculation, buy in an established neigh- borhood or where the circumstances and neighbors are such that restrictions or ex- penditures will make its character sure. The increase in your land value depends first upon the presence, then upon the efforts, of others; it is by their labor you hope to profit. 36 HOW TO BUY THE FARM Therefore, buy property on leading thoroughfares; except in a very small sec- tion devoted to the residence of million- aires, the price of residence property has a limit; even there the merest accident or the whim of fashion may destroy the value, but there is no telling what figure business property may reach. Do not build unless you have to. It is rare that a building pays five per cent, net on the value of the land and the cost of the house. "Who buys a house already wrought, gets many a brick and nail for nought." If, however, you can get a piece of ground in a growing neighborhood and Hve on it tiU you can sell at an advance, that is the safest and surest of investments. It delivers you from the power of the landlord. Lastly — ^in real estate — don't bite oif more than you can chew. Most of these rules apply to the pur- chase of suburban land. In farm buying, 37 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY keep as close to your market as you can. See that railway facilities are all right; get land likely to be needed for other purposes. The best way to begin is by securing all information possible from state agricul- tural departments. Write to the industrial agents of important raUroads traversing the section in which you want to locate. They have detailed information regarding land, markets, social conditions, etc.; get from the United States Agricultural De- partment a map showing the soil survey of the section of your choice. It must be borne in mind that personal aid is not to be expected from State Agricultural De- partments, Bureaus of Immigration, rail- way companies, or any pubhc agency. From the big farm agencies run for profit you can get lists of thousands of properties for sale. Some State Agricul- tural Departments co-operate with real es- tate men in their own states, by referring inquiries for farms to them. Some states HOW TO BUY THE FARM issue from time to time lists of "abandoned farms," but these change so constantly that they help but little except in the way of suggestion. When you start farm-hunting take along a good map. Then you wUl know a few things on your own account. Take the railroad maps with a grain of salt, as they are notoriously biased. Don't waste your time wandering around a strange locality by yourself. The local real estate man knows more about his community than you can learn in five years. In trying to find out things for yourself you wiU waste in aimless journeys undertaken in ignorance of real conditions, more time and money than a real estate man's conmiission amounts to. The only way to form a correct idea of the production of any given section, is to examine a particular farm in detail. Within well- recognized limits, all the farms thereabouts will be found of similar character. Before THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY spending money to look at land, learn all you can by correspondence. Whether it is more profitable in the long run to buy that good plot of land in a high state of cultivation with good buildings on it, at a high price, than to buy this exhausted piece of land with poor buildings or none at all, is a question for the individual to decide. It depends on your energy, grit, age, and how much money you have. It is much easier to take advantage of what the other fellow has done, than it is to build from the stump. You must bear in mind, how- ever, that well-kept land in a high state of cultivation never goes begging in the mar- ket. On the whole, if you have the capital to do it, you can make the biggest wages by buying rough or neglected land, and hewing it into shape. If you have a knowledge of soils, you may be able to find land that will grow something that no one supposes it will grow. This wiU be particularly useful in the case 40 HOW TO BUY THE FARM of land thought to be valueless. The lands about Niles, Michigan, were considered sterile until someone found out that they would grow mint, a valuable crop, which made the land salable at high prices. Get hold of a desirable bit of the earth. AU that men wear or eat or use; every- thing, shelter, food, tools and toys, comes from the land by labor. Even the capital used to make more of those things is taken from the land. The employer and the capitalist are, at bottom, only men who control the land or its products, who own rights of way, mining rights, or the fee of valuable lands. Thousands have "made" money by finding unexpected products in their land or of their lands, oil, coal, min- eral, plants; thousands more because their land was needed by someone else, and they were paid to get out of the way. To speculate on these chances is risky business; to keep land that enables you to make good pay while you wait, is profitable. 41 CHAPTER IV VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION IN this book, necessarily, we have to take much upon the reports of others, check- ing them only by our own judgment and experience. The following account of what has been done and is being done on plots of about a quarter of an acre to each family, however, can be easily re-verified by anyone who wiU go or write to Philadel- phia, or examine the New York experi- ment. Both show what can be done even by unskUled labor, with hardly any capital, on small plots of groimd where the soil was poor, but which are well situated. The directors say: "The Philadelphia Va- cant Lot Cultivation Association was or- ganized in 1897, when relief agencies were vainly striving to provide adequate assist- VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION ance for the host of unemployed. The cultivation of vacant city lots by the un- employed had already been tried success- fully in other cities. The first year we proA^ided gardens, seeds, tools, and in- struction only, for about one hiuidred fami- lies on twenty-seven acres of ground. At a total cost to contributors of about $1,800, our gardeners produced $6,000 worth of crops." The applicant is allowed a garden on the sole condition that he cultivate it well through the season, and that he do not trespass upon his neighbors. He must respect their right to what their labor pro- duces. A failure to observe these rules forfeits his privilege. "During ten years more than four thou- sand four hundred families have been assisted, many old people who could no longer keep up the rapid pace of our in- dustrial hfe, cripples whose physical con- dition held them back in the race for work, 43 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY persons who on account of sickness or other misfortunes have been thrown out through sharp competition in modern busi- ness, and unfortunate beings who, though clear in mind and strong in muscle, on account of business conditions, have been forced to the ranks of the unemployed — these have all had an opportunity opened to them: opportunity to enjoy all of the fruits from nature's great storehouse which an application of their own labor and skiU might secure. "The work of the Association has steadily expanded, untU, during the season of 1906, over two hundred acres were placed under cultivation opening opportunities to more than 800 families, with a resulting yield amounting to a value of $40,000." The first man who applied for a garden came to Dr. Morton's oflBce only a day or two after the first mention of the plan in the papers; he was so weak and ema- ciated that the doctor was afraid the poor 44 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION fellow would be unable to get out of his office without assistance. He was a widower with three girls and a boy, the oldest girl about seventeen. He received a garden which contained only about one-fifth of an acre. He ob- served that a certain part of another little farm was left untouched on account of being very rough, full of holes, and cov- ered with stone and bricks. Part of this farm was below the street grade and sub- ject to overflow, but it was larger than the others — nine-tenths of an acre. He offered to exchange, saying he did not mind the extra work. His offer was accepted. In a few days the stones and bricks had been thrown into the holes and covered with dirt. The low places had been filled in. It was a work in which the whole family joined. A small house was rented in the immediate neighborhood in lieu of their one room near the foul alleys of the city slum. Every inch of the soil was utilized. A rosy 45 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY hue took the place of the pale, wan cheek of a few months before. And now the harvest has come, and the winter's store can be enimierated. Thirty bushels of po- tatoes, four bushels of turnips, one bushel of carrots, thirty gallons of sauerkraut, fifteen gallons of catsup, five gallons of pickled beans, one hundred quarts of canned tomatoes, fifty quarts of canned corn, twenty quarts of beans, one thousand or more fine celery stalks, and many other things. Warm clothing has replaced the badly worn garments of nine months ago. A few pieces of furniture have been added. The boy has been provided with a small capital for his little business. ("Vacant Lot Cultivation," Reprint from N. Y. Charities Review of April, 1898, page 28.) The personal benefits that have come to a few individual cases, are largely the same that aU the gardeners enjoyed in New York and elsewhere. 46 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION An old colored woman — a grandmother — who had just been released from one of the hospitals where she had been treated for a long time for pleurisy, asked for a garden. It was more than a mile to the nearest plot, but she was quite wilhng to go even that distance if she could get a garden. At first, owing to her weakened condition, she was forced to work slowly and for short periods only, but a httle assistance enabled her to get a garden started. The work proceeded so well that more land was added to her small hold- ing, and most of her waking hours were now spent either in or near the garden, working among the tender plants or watch- ing them grow. Before the season was half spent she had developed one of the best gardens in the whole plot. Her sur- plus produce became so large that she had to devote most of her time to gathering and selling it. Finally she rented a small shed on a prominent street and passers-by 47 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY often stopped, and regular customers came to buy the freshly gathered produce, the supply being not only abundant, but of great variety. One of the best gardens, from the stand- point of value of produce as well as for the varieties of products it contained and the artistic arrangement, was worked by a man who had but one arm. Many other successful and profitable gardens were cul- tivated by men and women of an age when we generally expect them to depend entirely upon others for support. Many incidents were found where such habits as drinking and loafing around sa- loons and clubs and abusing the family have been checked on accoimt of the gar- dener's time and attention being occupied in the little farm. One of the workers came for work in a condition of mind and body which rendered his services almost worthless. He was scarcely able to carry on his work for a J3 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION minute beyond what he was shown. Each new move had to be explained constantly, and even then he was often found doing the work in the wrong way only a few minutes afterwards. Before long, however, he began to see that his place had its responsibilities and that the work of Mother Nature depended on his doing his part and doing it well. By the time the crops were ready to gather and market he came to reahze that the cost of production must come under the amount received from the sale of the product so as to prevent loss. By the end of the season he had learned so to utUize his time and to organize his work and execute our plans that we were able to recommend him to a farmer who was looking for a handy man about the place. In ten years our Association has made ten demonstrations of the following facts, each demonstration proving more clearly than the former ones: 49 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY First. That many people out of em- ployment must have help of some kind. Second. That a great majority of them prefer self-help, and many will take no other. Nearly all are able and willing to improve any opportunities open to them. Third. That to open opportunities to them does not pauperize or degrade, but has the opposite effect of elevating and ennobling. It quickly establishes self-re- spect and self-confidence. The best and most effective way of helping people in need is to open a way whereby they may help themselves. The most effective charity is opportunity accompanied with kindly ad- vice and a personal interest in those less fortunate than ourselves. Fourth. That the offering of gardens to the unemployed with proper supervision and some assistance by providing seeds, fertilizer, and plowing, accompanied with instruction, is the cheapest and easiest way of opening opportunities yet devised. 50 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION Fifth. That it possesses many advan- tages in addition to providing profitable employment; among others, that the worker must come out into the open air and sun- shine; must exercise, and put forth exertion, — all of which are conducive to health, and, most important of all, he knows that all he raises is to be his own. This is the greatest incentive to industry. The Vacant Lot Cultivation system is a school wherein gardeners are taught a trade (to most of them a new trade), farming, which oflTers emplojnnent for more people than all the other trades and professions combined: a trade susceptible of wide di- versification and offering many fields for specializing. But little capital is required; any other field would require large outlay. Its greatest advantage, however, is that the idle men and the idle land are already close to each other — ^the men can reach their gar- dens without changing their domiciles or being separated from their families. 51 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY It was not until 1905 that the full effect of the work was realized. A few garden- ers each year from the beginning have, after one or two years' experience, taken small farms or plots of land to cultivate on their own account, or have sought em- ployment on farms near the city; but the number was quite small compared to the whole number helped. Now more than ten per cent, of those that had gardens pre- viously have for the last two years been working on their own account. Out of nearly eight hundred gardeners, more than eighty-five either rented or secured the loan of gardens that season and cultivated them wholly at their own expense, and many others would have done so had suitable land been available. The number of gardens forfeited on account of poor cultivation or trespassing was only two out of 800 plots given out. The first important advance was early in the spring of 1904, when it became known VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION that a large tract of land that had been in gardens for several years would be with- drawn from use. A number of the gar- deners came together to talk over the sit- uation. One proposed that they form a club to lease a tract of land and divide it up among themselves. The plan was readily agreed to, and a nine-acre tract on Lans- downe Avenue was rented at $15 per acre per annum. Some sixteen families became interested, and Mr. D. F. Rowen, who had been one of the most successful gardeners, became manager. They had the land thoroughly fertilized and plowed, and then sub-divided. Some took separate allotments, as under the Vacant Lot Association's plan, and others worked for the manager at an agreed rate of wages per hour. The whole nine acres were thoroughly well cultivated, and a magnificent crop harvested. As soon as there was produce for sale, a market was established on the ground and a regular delivery system organized, which THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY later attracted much attention. It was car- ried on by the children, of nine to twelve years of age, from the various families. Each child was provided with a push-cart. There were many and various styles, made from little express wagons, baby coaches, and produce boxes. The children built up their own routes, and went regularly to their customers for orders. They made up the orders, loaded them into their httle push-carts, charged themselves up with the separate amounts in a small book, and at the end of each day's sales each child settled with the manager and was paid his commission (twenty per cent, of the receipts) in cash. These little salesmen and sales-girls often took home four to five dollars per week and yet never worked more than three to five hours per day. The work was done xuider such circumstances that to them it was not work but play. In another section of the city there were 64 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION a large number of applicants on our wait- ing-list wanting gardens. The available land was far too small to supply the de- mand. After long waiting and frequent importuning, one ambitious fellow, seeing that there was scarcely any hope of the Association getting land to supply his need, marked off a garden on an adjoining va- cant plot, which our Association had been unable to obtain. This gardener soon had a flourishing crop; but no sooner had he started than others did likewise. The field of eighteen acres was fast becoming fuUy occupied, and we felt obhged to notify the owner's agent and to assure him that it was without our consent that the work was done. Upon being asked by him for ad- vice in the matter, I suggested that he let the work proceed, and he did. It was but a short time before every foot of the eighteen-acre tract was in flourishing culti- vation, entirely at the expense of the gar- deners. Instead of this ground being unused 66 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY, and becoming overgrown with rank weeds and serving as a depository for unsightly and unhealthful rubbish, it was kept clear of such undesirable matter at no expense to the owner or community, and was a great benefit to more than sixty-five poor families who took gardens in it and who realized from them more than $3,000 worth of vege- tables. Our co-operative farm, while a compara- tively small part of the whole work, has completed another year of good results. It has opened to more than fifty men, women, and children in immediate need of the common supplies of life the oppor- tunity to work and receive their pay, daily or weekly as the case requires, without waiting for crops to mature. After paying wages and other expenses and bills amount- ing to $84, we were able to turn over to our treasury $365.39 from the sale of co- operative farm products — not as large a sum as we had expected, but this part of 66 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION the work had again been more than self- sustaining. Several large commercial organizations have come to our assistance and are allow- ing us the use of their idle land, I wish to call special attention to the attitude of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. As is well known, this company is managed by some of the most practical business minds in the world, and that our work has their approval is most gratifying. This great company turned over to the manage- ment of our Association some acres of land on the Philadelphia division, to be culti- vated for and by its employees, with the understanding that any of the land not needed for their employees, may be used by others. Other lines wiU doubtless fol- low their example. But it is in Europe, France and Eng- land especially, that the helpful features of the vacant lot cultivation plan has come to be most appreciated. In 1899, through a 67 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY lectxire delivered for the Musee Sociale of Paris by a director of the Philadelphia Va- cant Lot Association, and through the dis- tribution of its reports, the work was first taken up in France. The idea spread rapidly; the great railways put it into opera- tion along their lines, and so large has been its growth and so important are the results that in 1904 a Congress of Cultivators of Workingmen's Gardens, held in Paris, was attended by more than seven hundred dele- gates. More than one hundred and thirty villages, parishes and cities in the Republic now have the work under way, and during 1904 six thousand four hundred gardens were under cultivation. The railway systems of France are allot- ting practically all their idle lands along their right-of-way to their employees. The Orleans Railway takes the lead, having set aside plots for six thousand one hundred of its employees, who gladly accept the opportunity of adding something to their 58 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION daily income by their own extra labor. "The greatest value that our little garden has brought us," said a French woman, mother of a goodly number of rather small children, "has not been in the fine vege- tables it has yielded all summer, or the good times that I and the children have had in the open air, but in the glasses of beer and absinthe that my husband hasn't taken." "Quite right, mother, quite right," came from a man nearby. "The world can never know the evil we men don't do while we are busy in our little gardens." The growth of School gardens in this and European countries during the last six years has been remarkable. Philadelphia has become its leader. Over a thousand children of the city this year have had this practical instruction in this branch of indus- trial education. There were seven separate undertakings. One was established at Fifty- sixth and Lansdowne Avenue, of about 300 gardens, and one at Fifth and Catherine, 69 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY of about 250 gardens. They were a joy and benefit to thousands of children and their parents. Five other very successful gardens were started by the Association and by the Civic Club of Philadelphia. One was at Twenty- second and Locust Streets, and another at Twenty-second and Morris Streets. When we began work to prepare the ground in the rear of the Prince of Peace Church, we were told by dozens of people (some of whom as- sured us that they had lived in the neighbor- hood aU their hves) that it was useless to try to grow anything in that lot. The fence was three feet high, and there was scarcely a child in the neighborhood who could not go over it. The principal fear seemed to be that everything would be stolen — ^but the work proceeded. AU the children in the neighborhood became intensely inter- ested, but as the plot was small, only sixty- four could be given individual gardens. The same rules were adopted here as in 60 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION the Vacant Lot gardens, and being the first year, there were quite a number of forfeitures. But not a garden became va- cant that did not have a dozen ready and anxious to snap it up. The cultivation was excellent and the crops abundant, and best of all, not even a flower was stolen or even taken away by the httle owners until the teacher said they were ready to gather.^ "The garden in Water View Park was a most remarkable lesson in sociology. The city has a public bath house which attracts hundreds of children during the summer months, and immediately between the bath house and Underbill Street was a vacant space which was put under the control of the Civic Betterment Association of the Ward. This lot was turned into a school garden and playground. There was no fence between the garden and the play- ^The Superintendent adds that the few and trivial cases of stealing from vacant lot plots or school gardens were all at the places that were fenced. 61 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY ground, and the garden plot was so small that only thirty-four gardens could be provided for. We naturally expected to be greatly injured at times by thoughtless youths at- tracted there by the playgrounds and the bath house, as it was not unusual to see three to five himdred children there at a time. No trespassing of any kind oc- curred, and not a bit of trouble between the cultivators and the others." You see that these poor ignorant people, women, boys, cripples, old men, on less than 100 x 150 feet each, not only in Phila- delphia, but in New York,^ Detroit, and other cities, have aU been able to support themselves by their work on the land. You can do much better. To be sure, they had valuable land and plowing free, but for such little pieces of land these are small items, and they had no certainty of having the land even for a second year, consequently they could not ' See Appendix A. 62 VACANT CITY LOT CULTIVATION have hot-beds or any permanent improve- ment. You can make all these things. Then what can you do? Only remember they had intelligent instruction and did the work themselves, and got the whole pro- duct; often the children helped — ^they thought it fun. It does not pay to farm a small piece of land where all the workers have to be hired. Nor does it pay if one calculates merely to stick in seeds with one hand and pull out profits with the other. 6S CHAPTER V RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED "T F we get everyone out on the farms, A then there will be an over-production of farm products and a fall in prices." True, but there are farmers who could do better in towns; what we want to do is to make it easy for people to get on the land about the cities, then it would be equally easy for those farmers who are better adapted for city life to get near the cities. Under present conditions, where the farmer is forced out fifteen or twenty miles from the town by the high price of land and the large amount of land required, the farmer is as much cut off from the city as the city dweller is cut off from rural life. We need not be afraid to teach men better ways; there will always be plenty 64 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED too stupid or too old or too isolated to learn; these will remain a bulwark against too sudden change. Dr. Engel, former head of the Prussian Statistical Bureau, informs us that "Scien- tific farming succeeds because a given amount of effort, when more intelligently directed, produces greater results. Inas- much, then, as the amount of food which the world can consume is limited, the smaller wiU be the number of farmers required to produce the needed supply, and the larger wiU be the number driven from the country to the city. It has already been observed that if scientific methods were universally adopted in the United States, doubtless one-half of those now engaged in agricul- ture could produce the present crops, which would compel the other half to abandon the farm." This is "Engel's Law." This argument assumes that we are now consmning aU the food possible and that every one is fuUy supplied with food. But 65 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY when we consider the great masses of peo- ple in the slums of our cities who are always underfed and whose constant thought is about their next meal; when we see hun- dreds of able-bodied men waiting in line until midnight for half a loaf of stale bread, surely it seems that there is a possi- bility of keeping all of the present farmers at work if not of finding new fields for others, if we make our conditions such that there wiU be opportunities for every able-bodied worker to labor at remunerative employment. Professor L. H. Bailey, a most indus- trious and accurate observer, says: "Dr. Engel's argument rests on the assimiption that agriculture produces only or chiefly food; but probably more than half of the agricultural products of the United States is not food. It is cotton, flax, hemp, wool, hides, timber, tobacco, dyes, drugs, flowers, ornamental trees and plants, horses, pets, and fancy stock, and hundreds of other non-edible commodities. The total food 66 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED produce of the United States, according to the twelfth census, was $1,837,000,000. The cost of material used in the three industries of textile, lumber and leather manufac- tories alone was $1,851,000,000." "Dr. Engel thinks that the outlay for subsistence diminishes as income increases; but comforts and luxuries increase in in- timate ratio with the income, and the larger part of these come from the farm and forest. Dr. Engel, in fact, allows this, for he says that 'sundries become greater as in- come increases.' " We have already abundance of informa- tion about almost every county in the Union, pubUshed by Boards of Trade and land boomers, like the following about "Oxnard, Ventura County, the center of the famous lima bean district in California. For 1904 the returns from farm products alone, in this vicinity, are estimated at over $2,000,- 000. The sugar factory, which uses 2,000 tons of beets every twenty-four hours, re- 67 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY quires the yield of about 1,900 acres every season. The beet crop is rotated with beans, and the factory's supply is kept good by systematic methods. Two thousand head of cattle are being fattened at the present time in the company's yard on the beet pulp. Much of the pulp is also sold to local stockmen, who value it highly for feed. The factory turns out 5,000 bags of sugar every day." And again: "Eastern farm lands steadily declined in price up to about 1902, so that Eastern land sells for less than Western land of the same quality and of hke situation; but the tide seems at last to have turned, and much money is now being made in buying up cheap farms and especially in sub-divid- ing them for small cultivators." That sort of thing is interesting; but it is not what a man wants to know — ^he is anxious to learn how much he can make and where and how to do it. The man who seeks a comfortable living 68 KESTILTS TO BE EXPECTED will do better to rent on long lease or buy a few acres convenient to trolley or rail- road communication with a city; besides the returns which will come to the farmer from the use of a few acres, if he is the owner he will get a constant increase in the value of the land, due to the growth of the city. If the city grows out so that the land becomes too valuable to farm, he will be well paid for leaving.^ The amount of product to be grown for one's own use depends on the size of the family and its fondness for vegetables. "An area of 150x100 feet [about two- fifths of an acre] is generally sufficient to supply a family of five persons with vege- tables, not considering the winter supply of potatoes; but the acres must be well tilled and handled." (Bailey, "Principles of Vege- table Gardening.") ■ Although progress is continually forcing laborers back upon less desirable land, their loss, unless they are the owners, is the land owner's gain. 69 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "In other words, the produce that could thus be obtained from an acre of land well situated would abundantly supply with nearly aU the vegetables named, nineteen famiUes, comprising in all 114 individuals." (Same, page 43.) In our garden we must know what we want and know how to get it.* "The things to be considered in the home garden are: (1) a sufficient product to supply the family; (2) continuous succession of crops; (3) ease and cheapness of culti- vation; (4) maintenance of the productivity of the land year after year. "The ease and efficiency of cultivation are much enhanced if all crops are in long rows, to allow of wheel-tool tillage either by horse or wheel-hoe." Note. — "In a family garden 100x150 feet (which equals six New York City lots), the rows running the long way of the ' It is impossible to treat exhaustively of the various crops in a book of this kind. On onion culture alone there are four standard books, besides seven or eight recent experimental station bulletins. 70 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED area, eight or ten feet may be reserved along one side for asparagus, rliubarb, sweet herbs, flowers, and possibly a few berry bushes. A strip twenty feet wide may be reserved for vines, as melons, cucumbers, and squashes. There remains a strip seventy feet wide, or space for twenty rows three and one-half feet apart. This area is large enough to allow of appreciable results in rotation of crops; and if it is judiciously managed, it should maintain high productiveness for a life- time." (Bailey, 'Trinciples of Vegetable Gardening," page 34.) The experience of the Vacant Lot Gar- deners (Chapter IV) shows that if the land be near a large market where the product can be peddled or sold by the producers or by those, as in Mr. Rowe's case, with whom he directly deals, more than twenty-five dol- lars capital is not necessary, but Peter Henderson ("Gardening for Profit") esti- mates that to get the best results, $300 capital per acre is required for anything less than ten acres. Where the land is favorably situated a fortune may be made in cultivation of a few acres — with brains. Quinn says ("Money in the Garden") 71 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY that he knows a large number of market gardeners worth from ten to forty thousand dollars each, none of whom had five hun- dred dollars to begin with. If one has not enough money to get all that can be gotten out of his plot, it is best to put part of the land into clover to fit it for later use or to use it for raising grass. Results undoubtedly come from hard work, but it is not necessary, in order to cultivate a little land successfully, that you should work all day on your hands and knees; if you can raise fruit or nuts, this is not needed at all. But for vegetables a certain amount of it is necessary — ^when there is a large job of that kind of weeding to be done, you can hire Italians or Germans to do it better and cheaper than you can do it yourself. Those who will read this book can earn more with their heads than their hands; but when weeding is needed after a sud- 72 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED den shower and there is no one else, you must do some of it yourself; the weather will not wait for you to "get a man," and if you are not willing to do such things, your chances of success are greatly lessened. Here is the experience of one who "got a man:" "My garden, to begin with, was in the most rudimentary condition, having been allowed to run to grass. After digging up a spot about ten feet square in the turf, taking the early morning for the work, I decided that it would require all summer to get the garden fairly spaded up, so I hired a stalwart Irishman to do the work for me, which he did in a week, charging me nine dollars for the job. As he pro- fessed to be also an expert in planting vegetables, I bought a supply of seeds in the city and entrusted them to him, assuring myself that once in the ground the rest of the work would fall to me; if I could not keep a garden patch jfifty feet square clear 73 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY of weeds, I had better abandon the busi- ness at once, and all hopes of making a living out of scientific gardening. The be- ginning was an unfortunate one. The weather happened to be first very wet, and then so dry and hot that my vegetables were unable to break their way through the baked earth. When my peas and beans still gave no signs after being in the ground for two weeks, I discovered that the whole work would have to be done over again, A Presidential campaign was be- ginning which kept me in town often late at night, so that the chief labor of the garden fell to my faithful Irishman, who got far more satisfaction out of it than I did. The vegetables finally did come up above the surface, and many an evening I finished a hard day's^ work by pumping and carrying hundreds of gallons of water to pour upon potato plants, tomatoes, beans, and other things which a friend of mine, an expert in such matters, assured me were 74 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED curiosities of malformation and backward- ness. My Irishman told me that it was aU for want of manure, and by his advice I bought six dollars' worth of manure from a neighboring stable, and had it spread over the ground. The bills for my garden were meanwhile mounting up. I had be- gun the spring with a garden ledger, keep- ing an accurate account of every penny spent, and hoping to put on the other side of the page a tremendous list of fine vege- tables. The accounts are before me now, and I presume that every one who has been through the same experience has preserved some such record." (Naturally, if he be- gan that way.) ("Liberty and a Living," by P. G. Hubert, pages 76-78.) If your idea of farming is to bury "some seeds" in untiQed ground, regardless of suitability, and "wait tiU they come up," you will wait in vain for a decent crop. Says Professor Roberts in the "Farm- stead" (MacmiUan, 1900), "Mushrooms seU 75 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY at fifty cents per pound; maize for one- half cent per pound. Why? Because any- body, even a squaw, can raise maize, but only a specially skilled gardener can suc- ceed in mushroom culture." But enough has been said to show that you must cultivate with brains. The Ger- mans say, "What your head won't do, your legs have to." "We'U have a Uttle farm, A pig, a horse and cow. And you will drive the wagon While I drive the plow." is very pretty. The horse and the pigs are practical, if you can take care of them yourself; pigs are good farm catch-alls. If you have to pay a man to do it, you had better hire yoiu" horses and buy your pork. Two well-groomed, healthy cows, one calving in the spring and one in the autumn, can be made a source of profit, and of valuable manure, if you have land enough in a neighborhood where up-to-date 76 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED parents are willing to pay ten cents a quart for pure milk for their infants or even for family use. But your own baby's care and mUk will probably be enough for you to attend to promptly and thoroughly every day. The records of results in a contest for the clearest account of a garden, not for the results at all, reported in "Prize Gar- dening" (Orange Judd Co., 1901) seems somewhat discouraging at first, but, "the unprecedented drought of 1899 was so wide- spread and cut short so many gardens that many owners became discouraged and failed to continue the record." "The rules allowed a garden of any size above 1,000 square feet (20 feet by 50 feet), and plots varied from the lowest hmit up to twenty acres. There were few, however, above four or five acres." The first prize man, who had begun at that garden in 1896, paid $3.60 for rent of three-fourths of an acre within the limits 77 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY of Detroit, Michigan, and made over profit on it. To work this three-quarters acre took 200 hours of all kinds, part of it done by a woman — less than 17 days of 12 hours each; that is, it furnished wages at the rate of $6 per day for every twelve hours. He used a capital of $143. Another worked less than five acres near a town of 20,000 inhabitants in Pittis County, Missouri, where, however, "at times the market was glutted and much produce had to be thrown away." The soil is naturally poor, but he made $194.01 out of it that year of drought. Another contestant at Excelsior, Minne- sota, reports that he made four dollars and a quarter a day wages on four and a half acres which he rented at five doUars per acre. He sold the produce at wholesale. Mr. W. K. Cole, Middlesex County, Mass., had the idea "to show from actual experience what may be done by an ordi- nary farmer with the needed tools mider 78 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED average conditions on a common farm." On one and five-eighths of an acre he made $192.84, which is over $120 per acre. A nmnber of the contestants raised prod- uce at the rate of $150 to $400 per acre and over, even in semi-arid regions; for in- stance, L. E. Burnham says that he raised on his first garden of about one-third of an acre in eastern Massachusetts, garden stufi^ which he sold to summer cottagers for $61.69. This took about eight days' work, nearly all with a wheel hoe. L. E. Dimosh of Connecticut raised on one-quarter of an acre $146.21, of which over $85 was profit. In other cases the profits were $142 (Gianque, Nebraska) per acre; and over $295 (Dora Dietrich, Pennsylvania) ; with the rather exceptional profit at the rate of $570 (Mrs. Hall, Connecticut). Some showed a loss. Some of the town or city lots yielded 79 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY very high profits; one of a third of an acre gave a profit of $224.33 (Edge DarUng- ton, Md.).^ The summary "based upon the reports of five hundred and fifteen gardens in nearly every' state and territory and in Canada and the provinces, may be considered ac- curate and reliable. Covering such a vast territory local conditions are avoided." It shows that "the average size of farm gar- dens was 24,872 square feet, or about half an acre, the average labor cost $26.34, the average value of product was at the rate of $170 per acre, and the net profit over $80 per acre." Selecting the small market gardens which sent in reports, gave a net profit of $117.02 per acre. They averaged two and a half acres in size. A. Jefferies, Norfolk, Va., is quoted in Bailey's "Principles of Vegetable Garden- ing" as writing in regard to Virginian ' See Appendix B for other similar instances. 80 I. •=" !- Ci r~ W) n- d ^ ■;z! 1^ V. ^ T3 _ o RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED market gardens: "We have cases in which $2,000 has been recorded from sales in one year from one acre, and many cases in which at least $1,000 worth of produce has been sold from an acre." These are sales, not profits. Such results are not due to the bound- less and fertile soil of the new world nor to small farming alone — they are due to intelligence. "About Paris no less than fifty thou- sand acres are given to the field culture of vegetables and twenty-five thousand to the forced culture of the same. Already fifty years ago the yearly rent paid by market gardeners attained as much as £18 ($90) and £24 ($120) per acre, and yet it has been increased since, as well as the gross receipts, which were valued by Courtois Gerard at £240 per acre for the large market gardens, and twice as much for the smaller ones in which early vegetables are grown in frames." (P. Kropotkin, "Fields, 81 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Factories, and Workshops," pages 129-130.) Storer is quoted by F. H. King in "The Soil" (Macmillan, 1902) as saying that the Craigentinny Meadows, about two hundred acres in extent, irrigated by ditches with sewage from Edinburgh, Scotland, yield five cuts of grass between the first of April and the end of October. The yield of grass is estimated from fifty to seventy tons per acre, and the farm turns in to its owner every year from $15,000 to $20,000 at the least calculation. He gets the sewage free and his running expenses consist of the wages of two men. Other instances of similar crops in Scot- land are given, in one of which the market value of one crop of meadow grass on seventy acres exceeded by a large smn the first cost of $7,676 for an irrigation plant, which lifted water seventy feet. "But if we go to the farm of M. Goppart —one of the promoters of ensilage in France — ^we shall see him growing, on a RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED drained and well-manured field, no less than an average of 120,000 lbs. of corn-grass to the acre, which equals 30,000 lbs. of dry hay — that is, the food of three or four horned beasts per acre. . . . As to beet- root, which is used also for feeding cat- tle, Mr. Champion, at Whitby, England, succeeds, with the help of sewage, in grow- ing 100,000 lbs. of beet on each acre, and occasionally 150,000 and 200,000 lbs. He thus grows on each acre the food of at least two or three head of cattle. [See Toub- eau's Repartition Metrique des impots. Ed.] Mr. Gros, of Autun, succeeds in cropping 600,000 lbs. of beets and carrots, which crop would permit him to keep four horned cattle to each acre. As to crops of 100,- 000 lbs. of beets, they occur in numbers in the French competitions, and the success depends entirely upon good culture and appropriate manuring. It thus appears that while under ordinary high farming we need from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 acres to keep 83 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY 1,000,000 horned cattle, double that amount could be kept on one-half of the area, and if the density of population require it, the amount of cattle could be doubled again, and the area required to keep it might still be one-half, or even one-third of what it is now." (P. Kropotkin, "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," page 75.) Professor Ronna gives the following fig- ures of crops per acre at Romford (Bret- on's Farm), 28 tons of potatoes (say 952 bushels), 16 tons of marigold, 105 tons of beets, 110 tons of carrots, 9 to 20 tons of various cabbages, and so on. It was suggested to the Agricultural Department that it might fix standards of what is a good attainable crop. On every golf links we have what is called a Bogie score posted up. That is a score that a certain mythical Captain Bogie, supposed to be an average good player, could make on those links. On the course at IsUp, L. I., for instance, the Bogie 84 RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED score is 42. Though it has been done in 37, the ordinary player congratulates him- self when he gets down to the Bogie score. 'Now, if there were standards, attainable to ordinary intelligent and good cultivation, set in each section, it would enormously encourage farmers to reach them, which may be of great importance. One of the heads of the Department re- plied as foUows: "In regard to fixing a standard for each farmer to strive to attain, I think that a very good idea; but the standard for each crop in each particular locality would neces- sarily be somewhat different from that in every other locality. Persons who have had experience in experimental work keenly appreciate these points. The work which is done upon one soil formation under differ- ent climatic conditions in one season, does not necessarily find a duplicate in any other locality, and the experience is that what is accomplished in one year would not be 85 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY duplicated on the same soil and under the same management again in several years, for the conditions under which agriculture is carried on are so many of them outside of the control of the operator that it is very difficult to predict results or to attain any fixed standard. This is necessarily so with an operation which has so many uncer- tain factors to deal with as agriculture. Humidity of the atmosphere and of the soil, the available plant food in the soil, methods of tUlage, fertilizers used, recur- rence of frosts, amount of sunlight, the al- titude and latitude of different locahties, all have a bearing upon crop production. It is, therefore, very difficult to fix any approximate standard or average produc- tion for any particular locality without bas- ing it upon a long series of years. I think, however, that it is a subject worthy of agitation, and it might inspire agricul- turists to better work were such an ideal fixed upon." RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED This indicates that each experiment sta- tion or progressive farmer or teacher of agriculture could advantageously establish the local "Bogie score" of what might fairly be expected. We know how misleading averages are. The man who tried to wade across a stream whose average depth was two feet, was drowned. "The writer sometimes goes to a fishing club of which Cornelius Vander- bilt was a member. One of the standard jokes there was that the thirty members are worth on an average over two million apiece, that is, Cornelius sixty millions, and the rest of us (comparatively) nothing. Which are you to be? A Vanderbilt among cultivators, or the other feUow who makes the 'average'?" ("Free America," by the Author.) But even making aU allowances we see that we must cultivate much better than the "average," to make anything more than the farmer's hard living off the land. 87 CHAPTER VI WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE WE have shown what an acre has pro- duced. You must figure out for yourself what you can make your acres produce and what the product can be sold for. All progress in agriculture has come heretofore through experiments, made mostly by uninformed and untrauied men. What may not be done by practical learning and applied intelligence? The wonderful recent advances have been made in just that way. "The modern improved methods in agri- culture, known collectively as intensive farm- ing, have nearly all had their origin in the hands of truck farmers and market gar- deners. No class of the rural population WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE is more alert in utilizing the newest re- searches and discoveries in all lines of agri- cultural science, and none keeps in closer touch with the agricultural colleges and ex- periment stations." ("Development of the Trucking Interests," by F. S. Earle, page 488.) StiU, it is not advisable for the ordinary- city dweller, however intelligent, without other means and without either experience or study, to cast himself upon a small patch of ground for a living; but if he can give it most of his time mornings and even- ings, or if he sees, as many do, that he will be forced out of a position, it would be well for him seriously to consider in- tensive cultivation as a resource. It would be the greatest blessing to our day laborers if they could secure an acre of land which they could till in conjunction with their other labor. If time and change so works upon society as to put the laborer out of a job, he wUl be safe in his acre THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY home and can live from it and be happy and contented. The time required to cultivate an acre is much less than is generally supposed. The maximum time required seems to be that given in the University of Illinois Ex- periment Station at Urbana, Bulletin 61, by J. W. Lloyd, at the rate of 140 hours (say 14 days) for one horse and 250 hours (say 25 days) for hand labor. An acre of northeastern Long Island will produce 250 to 400 bushels of potatoes at a selling price of fifty to seventy-five cents per bushel, which brings an income of $125 to $300 to the grower. The actual cash outlay is: Seed potatoes $10.00 Commercial Fertilizer 13.00 Spraying for blight and pests 4.00 $37.00 SSO bo. selling at the minimnm price $135.00 Less the cash outlay 37.00 Income to the {rower from an acre $98.00 90 WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE A production of 400 bushels costs no more cash outlay per acre, while the in- come is big wages to the farmer.^ An acre wiU bear in fruit: Blackberries, 10,000 qts. at 7c. a qt $700.00 Dewberries, 9,000 qts. at 7c. a. qt 630.00 Gooseberries, 250 bus. at $2.00 a bu 500.00 Strawberries, 8,000 qts. at 5c. a qt 400.00 Currants, 3,000 plants yield 6,000 bus 200.00 Raspberries, per acre $300.00 to 600.00 Peaches, per acre 200.00 to 400.00 Pears, per acre 200.00 to 500.00 Apples, per acre 100.00 to 500.00 Grapes 100.00 Five, or even three acres will give a good living if the following can be ap- proximated: ' If but one acre be grown and hand labor is used the labor might cost an average of $40 per acre, with wages at $1.35 to $1.50 per day, and if the produce is shipped any distance by rail and consigned, it would cost $40 to $50 to pay selling charges, leaving you a profit of about $30 per acre on this crop. Other crops in the rotation might not be so profitable, hence it is not fair to figure an income on one. But, of course, in the above estimate, we are considering mainly the cases where the gardener does the work and earns the wages himself. 91 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY An acre will produce in vegetables — Asparagus, 3,000 bunches at 20c. per bunch $600.00 Cauliflower, 100 to 300 bbls. at f l.SO, say 450.00 Onions, 600 bu. at 7Sc. per bu 450.00 Cabbage seed, 1,000 lbs. at 40c a lb 400.00 Brussels Sprouts, 3,000 qts. at 10c. a qt 300.00 Celeiy, 6,000 bunches at Sc. a bunch 300.00 Parsnips, 300 bu. at $1.00 a bu 300.00 Lettuce, 9,000 heads at 3c. a head 270.00 Lima Beans, 50 bu. at $5.00 a bu , 250.00 Note. — The foregoing estimates are conservative. George T. PoweU, the well-known expert of Ghent, New York, says of these figures, which give the value of produce on Long Island, and were furnished by the Rev. George J. Newton, whose present address is Wellfleet, Mass, "I can certify these figures, which he took from the books of the members of his own church at Riverhead, Long Island, as being correct. I am carrying out some scientific experimental work with fruit trees, and I have every reason to believe that I shall even exceed these figures in the culture of apples as a specialty." We may hope to get from an acre, re- spectively, in Potatoes, 300 bu. at 75c. a bu $235.00 Cabbages, 20 tons at $10.00 a ton 200.00 Carrots and beets, 200 to 400 bus 150.00 Tomatoes, 200 crates at 7Sc. a crate 150.00 Early peas, SO bu. at $2.00 a bu 100.00 Turnips, 400 bu. at 25c. a bu 100.00 Spinach, 100 bbls. at 50c a bbl SO.OO WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE One farm in the Sacramento Valley con- sists of one single acre of irrigated land and gives a better home and larger net income for its owner than many of his neighbors enjoy on places of thousands of acres each. The little farm is at Orland, in Glenn County, and is the property of Samuel Cleeks, who has grown old tUling it for the past thirty years. Mr. Cleeks makes a comfortable living from this one acre and is able to save an average of four hundred dollars a year be- side. He has money to loan, if not to burn, as well as fruit, vegetables, and poul- try products to sell to those who are get- ting poorer every year in carrying on big farms without irrigation. Here is a list of what the place contains: Barn and corral space, 75x75 feet; rab- bit-hutch, 25x25 feet; house and porches, 30x30 feet; two windmill towers, 16x16 feet each; garden, 46x94 feet; blackberries, 16x90 feet; strawberries, 65x90 feet; cit- THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY rus nursery, 90x98 feet, in which there are 2,300 trees budded; one row of dewberries, 100 feet long; 4 apricot trees; 2 oak trees; 3 peach trees; 6 fig trees; 10 locust trees; 30 assorted roses; 20 assorted geraniums; 12 lemon trees, bearing, which are seven years old; lime tree, nine years old and bearing, from which were sold last year 160 dozen limes; 8 bearing orange trees; 4 bread fruit trees; 5 pomegranate trees; one patch of bamboo; 3 caUa lUlies; 4 prime trees; 3 blue gum trees; 6 cypress trees; 4 grape vines; 1 English ivy; 2 honeysuckles; one seed bed; one violet bed; 1 sage bed; 2 tomato vines; 13 stands of bees. (Wm. E. Smythe, in Maxwell's Talisman, Feb., 1904.) California is not the only place in the United States where a man can hve on one acre of ground, by intensive culture and with irrigation. The Eastern and Middle States can present just as good, if not better, opportunities, especially where land 94 WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE in small tracts is available near the large cities.^ At Hyde Park, a little village three miles north of Reading, Pa., there is a small farm owned by Oliver R. Shearer, who may be said to be one of the most successful farmers in the United States. This farm contains 3 1-3 acres, only 2^ of which are cultivated, but they yield the owner annually from $1,200 to $1,500. From the profits of his intensive farming, Mr. Shearer has paid $3,800 for his prop- erty, which, besides the land, consists of a modern two-story brick house, with barn, chicken-yard, and orchard, the whole sur- * The Farmers' Advocate (Topeka, Kansas) says of lands which ten years ago were among the much advertised "aban- doned farms" of the eastern states: "All oyer the eastern states where farming twenty years ago was pronounced a failure under western competition, there has sprung up this intensive cultivation. Violets are grown in one place and tuberoses by the acre in another. Celery is making one man's large profit near Williamsburg. Special fruits are cultivated. Currants grown by the ton and sold by the pound yield a profit. This is in progress over the entire range of farming." 95 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY rounded by a neat fence. He has also raised and educated a family of three children. There are no secrets, Mr. Shearer says, about his method of farming. A study of conditions, the application of common-sense Inethods and untiring energy, he asserts, will enable any farmer to do what he has done. The agricultural department at Washington expects to send an agent to make a study of Mr. Shearer's methods for pubhcation in one of its bulletins. In an agricultural exchange a small farmer tells that he makes a living and saves some money from a ten-acre farm. Before he was through paying for his land, which cost $100 an acre, building his house, fences, and outbuildings, he went in debt $1,300, having about the same amount to start with. He is near a good mar- ket, and in five years has paid off the debt, and has been getting ahead ever since. He raises poultry and small fruits, 96 WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE and says that it is a good combination, as most of the work with poultry comes in winter, while he can do nothing out of doors. He maintains that a ten-acre farm rightly managed will bring a good hving, including the comforts and some of the luxuries of life, and says: "This I have fully demonstrated, and what I have done others may do." Maxwell's Talisman says: "E. J. O'Brien of CitroneUe, Alabama, received $170 clear from an acre of cu- cumbers shipped to the St. Louis market. He was two weeks late in getting them on the market. He says those two weeks would have meant nearly double the net returns. He does not consider this an ex- traordinary return and hopes to do better next year." "Professor Thomas Shaw writes of a plot of ordinary ground in Minnesota com- prising the nineteenth part of an acre, which for years kept a family of six ma- 97 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY tured persons abundantly supplied with vegetables aU the year, with the exception of potatoes, celery, and cabbage. In addi- tion, much was given away, more especially of the early varieties, and in many instances much was thrown away." "In the market-gardens of Florida we see such crops as 445 to 600 bushels of onions per acre, 400 bushels of tomatoes, 700 bushels of sweet potatoes; which testify to a high development of culture." (Same, page 101.) We select from Bailey's "Principles of Vegetable Gardening" the following gen- eral estimates: Beets — ^Average crop is 300-400 bushels per acre. (Page 280.) Carrots— Good crop is 200-300 bushels per acre. (Page 283.) Cabbage — 8,000 heads per acre. (P. 338.) Potatoes — The yield of potatoes averages about 75 bushels per acre, but with fore- thought and good tillage and some fer- WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE tilizer the yield should run from 200 to 300 bushels, and occasionally yields will much exceed the latter figure. (Page 304.) Rhubarb — From 2 to 5 stalks are tied in a bunch for market, and an acre should produce 3,000 dozen bunches. (Page 445.) Salsify. — Good crop 200-300 bushels per acre. (Page 292.) Onions — A good crop of onions is 300- 400 bushels to the acre, but 600-800 are secured under the very best conditions. (Page 326.) The price per ton for horseradish varies from ten to fifty dollars, and from two to four tons should be raised on an acre, the latter quantity when the ground is deep and rich and when the plants do not suffer for moisture. (Page 298.) Averages are very misleading and it would be better to pay httle attention to them. They are like the average wealth possessed by a class of twenty school chil- dren. The schoolmaster who had $20 asked 99 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY what was the average wealth of each if the total wealth of the class was $20. The brightest boy answered, "One dollar." The schoolmaster asked Tommy at the foot of the class if he did not think they would be a prosperous class. He answered, "It de- pends on who has the 'twenty.' " But, all the more, good averages imply some wonderful yields. The following are actual averages in the United States Twelfth Census Report, Bulletin No. 237. Flowers and plants, $2,014; nursery products, $170; onions, $138, 245 bushels per acre; sugar cane, $87, 4 tons per acre; small fruits, $81; hops, $72,' 885 lbs. per acre; sweet potatoes, $37, 79 bu. per acre; hemp, $34, 794 lbs. per acre; potatoes, $33, 96 bu. per acre; sugar beets, $30, 7 tons per acre; sorghum cane, $21, 1 ton per acre; cotton, $15, 4-10 bale per acre; or- chard fruit, $14; peanuts, $14, 23 bu. per acre; flaxseed, $9, 9 bu. per acre; cereals, $8; hay and forage, $8 per acre. 100 WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE Specialties, however, often do much bet- ter. For example: R. B. Handy, in Farmers' Bulletin No. 61, United States Department of Agri- culture, tells us that a prominent and suc- cessful New Jersey grower says: "I can not give the cost in detail of es- tablishing asparagus beds, as so much would depend upon whether one had the roots to buy, and upon other matters. Where grow- ers usually grow roots for their own plant- ing the cost is principally the labor, manure, and the use of land for two years, upon which, however, a half crop can be had. "The cost of maintaining a bed can only be estimated per acre as follows: Manure (applied in the spring) $35.00 Labor, plowing, cultivating, hoeing, etc 30.00 Cutting and bunching 40.00 Fertilizer (applied after cutting) IS.OO Total $100.00 "An asparagus bed well established, say five years after planting, when weU cared 101 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY for should, for the next ten or fifteen years, yield from 1,800 to 2,000 bTinches per annum, or at 10 cents per btuich (fac- tory price) $180 to $200." "If the rent, labor, etc., for a crop of asparagus is $200 per acre, and the crop is three tons of green shoots at $100 per ton, on the farm, the profit is $100 per acre. If we get six tons at $100 per ton, the profit, less the extra cost of labor and manure, is $400 per acre." ("Food for Plants," by Harris and Myers, page 19.) Around Bethlehem, Indiana, the farmers raise hundreds of tons of sunflower seed every year, and the industry pays better than anything else in the farming line. A good deal of the seed is made into con- dition powder for stock, occasionally some is made into so-called "ohve oil" that is said to surpass cotton-seed oU. Large quantities are used for feeding parrots and poultry, or consumed by the Russian He- brews who eat them as we would eat peanuts. IDS WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE A careful investigation made in 1898 of the value of certain productions taken from farms in New York State, shows that the culture of apples is very profitable. From twenty adjoining farms in one neighbor- hood in western New York, the report gave an average annual return of $85 per acre at the orchard, covering a period of five years. Another report gave an average of $110 annual income per acre for three years, and these results were obtained where only ordinary care was given to the orchard. One orchard, where the trees had been well sprayed to protect the fruit from in- sect injuries, and the soil well cultivated and properly fertilized, gave a return in one year of $700 per acre, and for three years an average income of $400 per acre. One man bought a farm of 100 acres in Central New York with a much neglected orchard upon it of 30 acres, paying $5,000 for the same. He cultivated the orchard, pruned and sprayed the trees thoroughly, IDS THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY and in seven months from the time he pur- chased the farm, sold the apple crop from it for $6,000 cash. "Peanuts: Culture and Uses," by R. B. Handy in Farmer's Bulletin No. 25 of the United States Department of Agriculture says: "According to the Eleventh Census (Bul- letin No. 378, page 9) the average yield of peanuts in the United States in 1889 was 17.6 bushels per acre, the average in Vir- ginia being about 20, and in Tennessee 32 bushels per acre. This appears to be a very low average, especially as oflScial and semi-official figures give 50 to 60 bushels as an average crop, and 100 bushels is not an uncommon yield. Fair peanut land prop- erly manured and treated to intelligent ro- tation of crops should produce in an ordinary season a yield of 50 bushels to the acre and from 1 to 2 tons of excellent hay. (Of course better land with more liberal treatment and a favorable season will pro- 104 WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE duce heavier crops, the reverse being true of lands which have been frequently planted with peanuts without either manur- ing or rotation of crops.) Besides the amount of peanuts gathered there are al- ways large quantities left in the ground which have escaped the gathering, and on these the planter turns his herd of hogs, so that here is no waste of any part of the plant." Tobacco is a paying crop if the soil is just right. Two thousand pounds per acre can be raised on favorable sites. Con- necticut tobacco brings from twenty to thirty cents a pound; from four to six hundred dollars being the possible return. Some Connecticut soils raise Sumatra to- bacco equal to the imported crop that sells in this country for about $3.50 a pound. The Department of Agriculture claims that the Cuban type of tobacco can be closely approximated in Pennsylvania and Ohio. But it must be remembered that the soil 105 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY is of paramount importance in tobacco rais- ing. The Department has in preparation son maps of the important tobacco districts of the United States. If you think your land may be suited to tobacco, apply there for information. You may make your land invaluable. D. L. Hartman, Rural New Yorker, July 7th, 1906, gives the following facts and figures: "During last season the sales from one acre of early tomatoes amounted to $454, and from a trifle more than two and one-half acres, including the acre of "earlies," the remainder mid-season and late plantings, the total sales amount to over $900. From a little less than one acre and a half $555 worth of strawberries were sold, while the returns from early cabbages during the last few years have been at the rate of about $300 per acre. These state- ments are not made in the spirit of chal- lenge. The results are gratifying to me, because larger than anticipated; but much 106 WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE greater values can be and are pro- duced. In fact, the limit of value that may be grown on an acre of land no one can tell. I have a small plot of ground containing less than one-sixth of an acre, planted one year with radishes and lettuce, followed by egg-plant and cauliflower, and the next year to radishes alone, followed by egg-plant, and each year the total sales amounted to over $200, at the rate of $1,200 per acre. Greatly exceeding even this was a smaller plot, measuring 20 x 65 feet, last year, planted first to pansies, plants sold when in bloom, followed by radishes, of which one-half proved to be a worthless variety (it lay idle long enough to have produced another crop of radishes), then half was planted to late lettuce, the other half being sown for winter cabbage, plants yielding no cash return. Yet the the total sales for the season from this small plot, less than one thirty-second of an acre, was $86.78, at the rate of the sur- 107 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY prising sum of $2,780 per acre, and could easily have been raised to the rate of $4,000, and that without the use of any- glass whatever. Truly the possibilities of the soil are unknown." The co-operative features used by North- eastern Long Island intensive farmers are worthy of imitation. In the community of Riverhead a club buys at wholesale rates commodities which the farm and household require. The club does a business of $60,- 000 each year, and has a high rating in the commercial agencies. In another instance at Riverhead an association mar- kets the crop of cauUflower, sending cars of such produce to Cincinnati and Chi- cago. These are the best forms of co- operation. "In the market-gardening sections the banks show prosperity. In the towns of Riverhead and Southold there are two sav- ings banks with deposits of $4,000,000 each, and five business banks which are 108 WHAT AN ACRE MAY PRODUCE doing a thriving business. In this stretch of thirty miles on eastern Long Island the farms are mostly free from encumbrance of any kind. "It should be noted, however, that their towns have the open Sound with its bays which furnish open ways for transportation and an unowned field for work." (From circular of the Long Island Guild of New York City.) 109 CHAPTER VII SOME METHODS WE must not put all our time into one crop unless we are rich enough to do our own insurance; for drought, or damp, or accident, Hi-adapted seed, or general un- favorable conditions may make failures of one or more crops. But in variety and succession of crops is safety and profit. In order to succeed, crop must be made to follow crop, so that the ground is used to its full capacity. To leave it fallow for even a week is to invite weeds and to lose much of the advantage of tillage, as well as so much time. In the North, seeds of many kinds should be sown from the first of March to the first of August; in the South they should be sown in every month. By following the simple tables in L. H. 110 SOME METHODS Bailey's "Garden Making" (Macmillan, 1901), you will find work ready and crops maturing and ready for sale in every month in the year. There is an admirable table of the time to plant, given in Edith Loring Fullerton's "How to Make a Vegetable Garden," though it does embrace some weird vege- tables, explaining, for instance, that "Pats- choi is used like chards," and that "Scoly- mus is sowed like Scorzonera."^ One can live while waiting for the crops to come up, for many crops mature rapidly. Specialties give employment only during a few months of each year and bring re- turns only at periods of the year, but the returns can be made almost immediate and the work almost continuous. Long Island and Jersey farmers in marketing their crops sell Spinach and Radishes in April Peas, Early Onions and Lettuce in May ' See also Appendix F. Ill THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Asparagus and Strawberries in June Tomatoes, Cucumbers and Cabbage Seeds in July Early Potatoes, Peaches and Beans in August Onions and Potatoes in September Celery in October Cauliflower in November Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts in December Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts in January Brussels Sprouts in February Brussels Sprouts in March This order of crops can be varied to suit conditions. "The old practice of growing vegetables in beds usually entails more labor and ex- pense than the crop is worth; and it has had the effect of driving more than one boy from the farm. These beds always need weeding on Saturday, hohdays, circus days and the Fourth of July. Even if the available area is only twenty feet wide, the rows should run lengthwise and be far enough apart (from one to two feet for smaU stuff) to allow of the use of the hand wheel-hoes, many of which are very efficient. If land is available for horse- 112 SOME METHODS tillage, none of the rows should be less than thirty inches apart, and for late grow- ing things, as large cabbage, four feet is better. If the rows are long, it may be necessary to grow two or three kinds of vegetables in the same row; in this case it is important that vegetables requiring the same general treatment and similar length of season be grown together. For exam- ple, a row containing parsnips and salsify, or parsnips, salsify and late carrots, would afford an ideal combination; but a row containing parsnips, cabbages, and lettuce would be a very faulty combination. One part of the area should be set aside for all similar crops. For example, all root crops might be grown on one side of the plot, all cabbage crops in the adjoining space, aU tomato and eggplant crops in the cen- ter, all corn and tall things on the opposite side. Perennial crops, as asparagus and rhubarb, and gardening structures, as hot- beds and frames,, should be on the border, 113 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY where they will not interfere with the plowing and tilling." (Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 31.) Usually where large acreages are worked there is a tendency to devote a greater portion of the land to one crop and some- times a failure in this crop will mean ruin to the farmer, whereas, where small areas are used, there must necessarily hie a di- versity of the higher priced crops and a failure in one is not so likely to be disastrous. To get the greatest production from the soil two crops can be grown in the same soU at the same time — one of which wUl ma- ture much earlier than the other, thereby giving its place up just about the period of growth when the second crop would need more room. This is known as com- panion cropping. "In companion cropping there is a main crop and a secondary crop. Ordinarily the main crop occupies the middle part and 114 SOME METHODS later part of the season. The secondary crop matures early in the season, leaving the ground free for the main crop. ' In some cases the same species is used for both crops, as when late celery is planted between the rows of early celery. "Following are examples of some com- panion-crops : "Radishes with beets or carrots. The radishes can be sold before the beets need the room. "Corn with squashes, citron, pumpkin, or beans in hills. "Early onions and cauliflower or cabbage. "Horseradish and early cabbage. "Lettuce with early cabbage." ("Princi- ples of Vegetable Gardening," page 184.) If fruit trees be planted, vegetables may be grown in rows. As soon as the early vegetables mature they are removed, and a midsummer crop planted. These are fol- lowed by a fall or winter crop. Hadishes, lettuce, and cabbage grow at 116 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY the same time and on the area formerly used for one crop. Early potatoes and early cauliflower are followed by Brussels sprouts and celery, two crops being as easily grown as one by intelligent handling. The best beans are grown among fruit trees. The principles of "double-cropping" are summarized by Professor Thomas Shaw, in The Market Garden^ July, 1895. "Onion sets may be planted early in the season and onion seeds may then be sown. Between the rows cauhflower may be planted. Later between the cauhflower, two or three cucumber seeds may be dropped. The onion sets up around the cauliflower may be taken out first, and the cauliflowers in turn may be removed in time to let the cu- cimibers develop. "Midway between the rows of onions grown from seeds, we can plant radishes, lettuce, peppergrass, spinach, or some other early rehsh, which will have ample time to lie SOME METHODS grow and to be consumed before harm can come to the onions from the shade of any one of these crops. When the onions are well grown, turnips can be sown midway be- tween their rows." So we get two crops of onions, besides cauliflowers, cucumbers, radishes, and turnips ofi" the same place. Weeds won't have much chance in soil treated like that. "Multum in Parvo Gardening" (Samuel Wood) claims £620 ($3,100) from one acre by the expenditure of considerable capital in growing fruit against brick walls — it cost over $3,100 to prepare the land, of which the walls cost $2,300. In this system the fruit trees are pruned and trained tiU they look like firemen's ladders. "In the suburbs of Paris, even without such costly things, with only thirty-six yards of frames for seedlings, vegetables are grown in the open air to the value of £200 per acre." (P. Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," page 80.) 117 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "At the present time, for fiilly 100 miles along the Rhone, and in the lateral valleys of the Ardeche and the Drome, the country is an admirable orchard, from which mil- lions worth of fruit is exported, and the land attains the selling price of from £325 ($1,625) to £400 ($2,000) the acre. Small plots of land are continually reclaimed for culture upon every crag." (Same, page 133.) In California we hear (from the reports of Mr. George P. Keeney, a weU-known engineer and land grader) that while good truck and fruit lands usually seU for $25 to $350 per acre, the land with full bear- ing fruit or nut trees often sells at $1,000, and even up to $2,000 per acre. There is no reason why any intelligent persons should not make their land increase in the same way. The London Daily News reports that in the year 1905, which was not a good year for all crops, on a half acre of land, Mr. 118 SOME METHODS Henry Vincent, of Brighton, England, raised the following products: £ s. d. 3,660 cabbages at %A. and Id. each 9 * 18 4 $48.68 70 bushels spinach at 4d. and 5d. per gallon 5 6 7 36.14 950 cauliflowers at Id. and ly^d. each 5 6 8 36.16 Parsley at Id. and 2d. a bunch 4 1 8 19.93 1,460 lettuces at y^d. and Id. each 4 17 19.91 660 broccoli at Id. and l%d. each 3 IT 9 19.09 16 bushels potatoes 2 18 10 14.50 1914 bushels Brussels sprouts 3 16 13.80 106% gallons peas at 6d. per gallon 3 13 3 13.11 120 gallons artichokes at 5d. per gallon... 3 10 13.30 Flowers 2 9 2 13.09 267 vegetable marrows at ly^d. each 1 13 9 8.33 2,976 carrots at eight and Id 1 11 7.65 364 bundles radishes at 30 for Id 1 7 10 6.88 14 gallons French beans 18 3 4.56 12 gallons currants at Is. 4d. per gallon. . 16 4.00 95% punnets mustard at 2d. each 15 11 3.97 27 pounds mushrooms at 6d. per pound... 13 6 3.37 Rhubarb 11 10 2.97 948 bushels sprout tops at four for Id 19 9 4.93 38 dozen leeks at 6d. per dozen 19 4.75 1,150 plants sold at 6d. per 100 5 9 1.43 11I^ gallons broad beans 3 9 1.03 97 bundles sea-kale at 6d 3 8 6 11.93 978 bundles of asparagus-kale at Id. per bundle 8 16 10.11 119 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY £04 beet roots at Vgd. and Id. each S 4 9.88 3,913 gallons gooseberries Is. 4id. per gallon 1 19 9 9.83 319 bundles mint at 2d. per bundle 1 16 8.90 30 bundles sage at 3d. per bundle. 3 4 .83 One cart load of stones 3 6 .63 18 bundles of fennel at 2d. per bundle 3 2 .79 Thyme 1 6 .37 68 8 9 $337.18 The year's expenses were as follows: £ s. d. Rent for half acre. 2 6 8 Sutton & Sons' seeds 3 4 Hired labor 1 12 Tilley's seeds 7 6 One pair garden boots 9 6 One pair trousers 8 9 Two new measures 3 3 Seven loads manure..... 19 9 8 $44.26 This leaves a profit of SQ-odd pounds, or about $300. Thus this yield is at the rate of $600 per acre. Mr. Vincent explains how he came to go into intensive cultivation: "A few years ago the doctors said if I did not go out 120 SOME METHODS more I could not live. Very well, just at that time there was an outcry about the land not paying for cultivation. I could not understand this, for as a boy at seven years of age I had to go out to farm work, therefore I never went to school. Anyhow I thought something was' very wrong if the land would not pay; so, to compel myself to go out in the fresh air, I took an allotment on the Sussex Downs to work in the early morning before my daily duties began. I might say that I am a waiter, and have been in my present sit- uation forty years, so you can understand I could not know much of land or garden work. I may add that my duty at the hotel I am working in means eighty hours a week, so I could not see my way clear in the few spare hours I get to take more than half an acre of land to garden early, especially as I started knowing practically nothing about such work, but I can man- age to do my half -acre all alone." 121 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "My garden is situated on the Brighton Race Hill ridge, and twelve years ago it was but four inches of soil on chalk, but I now have a foot of soil on the whole of the half acre, and year by year my profits increase. "Yes, get the men to stop on the land in this country. We ought not to have workhouses. Every man could live, and live well, if he could get the land, and would work it as it should be worked. "Farmers and landowners grumble be- cause the land does not pay. Now for the fault. It is quite evident it is not the land, therefore it must be the fault of the man. Verj' well, get the land from these landed proprietors, by sale preferred, and let it out to men, not by 1,000 acres, as no man can farm well a thousand acres in England; let the farms be greatly reduced, and then the land can be treated as it should be. Most of us have children, and we aU know how we love and treat them. 122 SOME METHODS Treat the land in the same manner, feed it, and keep it clean, and you wiU have no cause to complain. The land of old Eng- land is as good as it ever was. "I have serious thoughts of opening a kind of school for people who would hke to make $500 a year off an acre. It is to he done, and done easily. I do know that one man alone can manage two acres, and at the end of this year I shall be able to tell how much more he can manage alone, so under my system one can gain £4 a week off two. acres and do all one's self. "If the land wiU produce over one hundred pounds per year per acre, is it not wrong for a man to have, say, 500 or 1,000 acres which in no way can he prop- erly manage; as, in the first place, he can- not feed such an acreage, let alone keep it clean and gather in his crops?" In truth, what an acre may produce de- pends on time, place, and circumstance. The product of the best acre of land so 123 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY situated that its product covdd be sold at retail in a nearby market, and which has been cultivated under the best management for a term of years, would provide a very comfortable living. The product of other acres, measured by what they produce to the cultivator in living, declines through various grades down to almost nothing on the acre far from raUroads or diflScult of access. While in quantity and quality the least favored acre could be made to produce as much as one best situated, yet, almost none of its production would be available to sell, while the product of the favorably located acre could be sold as rapidly as grown. IM CHAPTER VIII THE KITCHEN GARDEN THE aim of the kitchen garden is to provide an abundance and variety of food for the family. As the object of the cultivator is to get the largest product for his labor, he ought to produce all that he can consume on the least possible area. Though one may go into mushrooms or frog raising as a money crop, the kitchen garden is the first indispensable and should first be given attention. For a garden choose a piece of land with a southern exposure, sheltered on the north and west by woods, buildings, hedge, or any kind of a wind-break. This arrange- ment will give the earliest garden, for it gets all the sun there is. By running the rows north and south, the rays of the sun 126 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY strike the eastern side of the row in the morning, and the western side in the after- noon. The best time to take hold of a piece of land is in the faU, because then it can be plowed ready for the spring planting. The alternate freezing and thawing during the winter breaks up the sod and the stiff lumps thrown up by the plow, so rendering the soil pliable and easily worked. This is especially true of land that has been re- claimed from the forest, or which has not been farmed for many years. Before the plowing is done, the land for the garden should be manured at the rate of twenty-five large wagon loads to the acre. If you can get a suitable plot that has been in red clover, alfalfa, soy beans, or cow peas, for a nimiber of years, so much the better. These plants have on their roots nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which draw nitrogen from the air. Nitrogen is the great meat-maker and forces a pro- 136 THE KITCHEN GARDEN longed and rapid growth of all vegetables. After manuring and plowing, harrow re- peatedly with a disc or cutaway harrow luitil the soil is as fine as dust. Then you have a seed-bed which wiU give the fine roots a chance to grow as soon as the seeds sprout. Too much stress cannot be laid upon the importance of thoroughly working the soil at this time. Every stone, weed, or clod that is left in the soil destroys to that extent the source from which the plants can get their food. A quarter-acre garden, which is big enough to supply the whole family with a suc- cession of vegetables for summer and fall, as well as some potatoes and turnips for winter, will take an average workman about four days to dig over and three days to plant. The four days' work of digging will need to be done only once. The time spent upon planting succession crops will depend upon the amount of the garden re- served for rotation. The part kept for let- 127 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY tuce, radishes, spinach, beets, Swiss chard, peas, string and wax beans, may be digged over in a favorable season for three suc- cessive plantings, while the part devoted to early potatoes would need to be digged only twice — once when the planting is done, and again when the ground would be pre- pared for a crop of late cabbage or tur- nips. A planting table for vegetables, which is complete and comprehensive, is reproduced by special permission in Ap- pendix F. It is far more important^ to plant seeds at the proper depth than that they should be planted thinly or thickly, for if they are planted too thin, it makes a sort of advantage by giving the individual plants ample room to develop to large size; and if planted too thick, the evil can easily be remedied by thinning or transplanting. After the seeds come up, the size of almost aU the vegetables can be increased by transplanting, in favorable soU, which 128 THE KITCHEN GARDEN gives each plant room for complete de- velopment. It is too expensive to risk part of the land heing unused or half used on account of seeds dying, or to put in so many seeds in order to insure growth that they wiU crowd one another. Where possible, therefore, seeds should be sprouted and planted, not "sown." Lima beans planted on edge with eye down will come up much sooner than if dropped in carelessly so they have to turn themselves over. In a small garden the time saved by such planting will repay the extra trouble. In some things like onions and radishes, however, it is better to sow them thick, and then thin them out, so as to get the effect of transplanting without so much labor. In others, like lettuce and all the salad plants, transplanting gives new life and energy and develops the individual plants in a way that will astonish those 129 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY not familiar with what free development means. It is wise to plant corn after lettuce and radishes are gathered, and more lettuce, corn or salad, after the beans are picked. Then late crops, cabbage, cauliflower or spinach, can go where early corn grew, so that the small patch may earn your living and pay big dividends. Do not let two vegetables of the same botanical family follow each other. For instance, lima beans should not follow green beans or peas, as all its family draw about the same elements from the soil, and are likely to have the same insects and diseases. Do not plant cucumbers, squash, or pumpkins too near each other, as they wiU inter-impregnate and produce uneatable hybrids. C. E. Hunn, in the Garden Magazine, gives the following arrangement: "For the beginner who wants to get fresh vegetables ISO THE KITCHEN GARDEN and fruits from May until midwinter, a space 100 x 200 feet is enough. "1. Plant in rows, not beds, and avoid the backache. "2. Plant vegetables that mature at the same time near one another. "3. Plant vegetables of the same height near together — ^tall ones back. "4. Run the rows the short way, for convenience in cultivation and because one himdred feet of anything is enough. "5. Put the permanent vegetables (as- paragus, rhubarb, sweet herbs) at one side, so that the rest will be easy to plow. "6. Practice rotation. Do not put vines where they were last. Put corn in a dif- ferent place. The other important groups for rotation are root crops (including potatoes and onions) ; cabbage tribe, peas and beans, tomatoes, eggplant and pepper, salad plants. "7. Don't grow potatoes in a small gar- den. They aren't worth the bother. 131 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "The following small fi*uit garden re- quires 100 X 100 feet. Small fruits planted this year will yield next year. Fruits Length of rows Distances between to plant plants Strawberries, early 100 feet 11/2x4 feet Strawberries, mid-season 100 " l%x4 « Strawberries, late 100 " 11/2x4 « Raspberries 200 " 3xS (Red, black, yellow and purple; the last for canning.) Blackberries 200 feet 6x6 feet Currants 100 " 3x4 Grapes 200 " 8x8 Peaches (6) 100 " 15x15 « Plums (6) 100 « 15 X IS " Pears, dwarf (6) 100 " 15 x IS " "If fruits are wanted in the garden, plant a row of apple trees along the north- ern border, plums and pears on the western sides, dherries and peaches on the eastern side. Next the apple trees run a grape treUis; and then in succession east and west, run a row of blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries and currants. These rows with the apple trees, form a wind-break, and 132 THE KITCHEN GARDEN besides adding to the income, protect the vegetables. Next to the bush fruits, be- tween them and the ends of the vegetable rows, put rhubarb, asparagus, and straw- berries." Insect pests must be watched for and their destructive work checked. Ashes, slaked lime, or any kind of dust or powder destroys most insects which prey on the leaves of plants. The reason for this is that the dust closes the pores through which the insects breathe. It should therefore be applied when the leaves are dry. Cut-worms ca.n be destroyed by winter plowing. Rotation of vegetables will . re- duce the damage from insects, because each family has its peculiar bugs. By constant, change to new soil, the pests have no opportunity to get a foothold. With bugs, as with boys, only those who are interested in them and therefore under- stand them, can manage them. It is fun to study the insects — and it pays. 133 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY It is difficult to give any fixed rule as to how much one may expect to produce on land devoted to the kitchen garden. As an example of what the most unskilled may do, the Ninth Report of the Vacant Lot Cultivation Association mentions a sample garden of one himdred square feet of Philadelphia land cultivated hy school chil- dren ten to twelve years of age as pro- ducing the following: string beans, ll^ pints $ .10 Lettuce, 40 heads 2.00 Lima beans, S>4 pecks 75 Tomatoes, Si/j pecks 1.00 Beets, 6 bunches 30 Cabbages, 3 heads 15 Radishes, 30 bunches 1.00 $5.30 See how we can learn from our children. The values in money are given to show what can be saved in household expense by raising our own stuff. This rate of production carried out on a quarter-acre garden would have a money 134 THE KITCHEN GARDEN value of more than $500. The Superin- tendent believes that with care and good market facilities a quarter acre could easily be made to produce an average yield of that much or more. W. F. Fairbrother, of New Jersey, in the Garden Magazine in 1906, gives the following cost and product from a garden 22x34 feet: Dehit Manure, 1 double load $3.50 Fertilizer, SO pounds 75 Poultry trire, SO yards 2.50 Posts, 12 at ISi/g cts 1.S0 Tin strips, 4 25 Seeds 1.55 Tomato and Pepper plants .40 Total $9.45 Credit Lima beans, 7 qts. at 12 cts. per qt $ .84 Brussels sprouts, 12 qts. at 25 cts. per qt 3.00 Onions (white) IS qts. at IS cts. per qt 2.35 Peas, 3 qts. at 10 cts. per qt i 30 Beans, 38 qts. at 10 cts. per qt 3.80 Cucumbers, 200 at 1 ct. each 2.00 Peppers, 150 at ll^ cts. each 2.35 135 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Muskmelons, 19 at 8 cts. each 1.53 Turnips, 96 at 1 Vi cts. each 1.44 Beets (433), 106 bunches at 3 cts. per bunch 3.18 Radishes, 75 bunches at 114 cts. per bunch 1.13 Lettuce, 81 heads at 5 cts. per head 4.05 Tomatoes, 6 bushels at 50 cts. per bushel 3.00 Parsley estimated at 75 Total $29.51 On this 748 square feet of land the net profit is shown to be about three cents per square foot or $330 for a quarter-acre plot. I. M. Angell, New York, reports that on a plot 15 X 30 ft. her total yield was as follows : Potatoes $ .60 Onions 10 Radishes 20 Parsley .80 Peas 1.10 Carrots 75 Chard 60 Lettuce 2.00 Beets , 60 Corn 2.00 Wax beans 50 Bush llmas .30 Pole string beans .60 THE KITCHEN GARDEN Pole limas 65 Cucumbers i 80 Squash , 30 Tomatoes 85 $13.55 This yield gives about the same profit per square foot as the former one. Mr. Mahoney, Superintendent of the Fairview Garden School, Yonkers, New York, reports the following for 1905: Radishes Lettuce String beans Onions Carrots Parsnips PRODtrCE GROWir IX THEEE GAKDElfS. 10% X 23 348 40 heads 1905 Turnips Beets Celery- Potatoes Value 20 quarts 130 63 35 6 heads 20 110 15 4 quarts $7.63 10x17 204 28 heads 18 quarts 76 60 32 5 heads 20 90 6 $5.03 8x13 190 21 heads 14 quarts 40 40 & heads 70 $3.15 Mr. Mahoney estimates that the total value of produce grown on the 250 gar- 137 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY dens, cpmposing the school plot, in all about one and one-quarter acres of land, was $1,308, or at the rate of more than a thousand dollars per acre. When it is taken into consideration that all the labor was done by boys ranging in age from eight to twelve years, this result is truly astonishing. What may not adult skilled labor pro- duce when applied freely to the land? Mr. Julian Burroughs, in the. Garden Magazine^ reports that on two strips of land measuring 20 x 100 and 10 x 50 feet, 2,500 square feet in all, he secured the following results: Cost Seed $3.10 Manure (3 loads; not enough) 3.00 Ashes (3 barrels of wood) 1.30 One-half bag of potato fertilizer 1.35 150 ft. of wire netting for peas 1.30 *8.75 ReceifU Meloas, 100 at 10 cts flO.OO 138 THE KITCHEN GARDEN Squash, 30 at 20 cts 4.00 Peas, 4 bushels at $2.00 8.00 Beets, 4 barrels at $1.00 4.00 Lettuce, 100 heads at S cts 5.00 Corn, 400 ears at 1 ct 4.00 Beans 1.00 Tomatoes, 3 bushels at $1.00 3.00 Cabbages, late cauliflower, radishes, onions 3.00 $41.00 Net profit $32.75, or about one and one- third cents per square foot. As we have shown above, this may be doubled and trebled. 139 CHAPTER IX TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT— SPECIALIZING CROPS TO subdue the land with an axe, a plow, and a spade, is possible; mil- lions of acres have been so subdued. This method, however, is the most expensive of aU, as in our times markets won't wait, and the man who wants to get on must produce as quickly as possible. To do so, he must have the best tools. They will pay for themselves many times over in a single year. For the farm, the following list, in addition to a well-stocked tool chest, (hammer, saw, plane, axe, etc.) covers the indispensable: 1 team horses (these may be hired) $200.00 1 walking plow 10.00 1 disc or cutaway harrow 35.00 1 farm wagon 50.00 1 cultivator (3 horse) 35.00 140 TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT 1 one horse cultivator 8.00 Shovels, pick, mattock or grubbing hoe 10.00 Work harness for two horses 35.00 !.00 These things you must have to get the land in proper shape for seeds or plants; but special crops require special tools. A scythe is good to keep weeds away from, the fences. A sickle is handy to keep down rank grass. To reduce living ex- penses, a cow for $40, and fifty hens at fifty cents each, say $25, will supply a large family with milk and eggs. Most people make the mistake of buying too many things and these poorly selected. It is better to have too few tools than too many, for tools are often dropped where last used, and so are lost. Then if money is scarce, you may not be able to make a shelter for your tools, and they will rust through the winter. Many farmers, through neglect, have to replace their tool equip- ment every four or five years, but with 141 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY attention and care, the original equipment, even to the team, ought still to be in use twenty years after their purchase. I know many instances where this is true. The above equipment is the minimimi for be- ginning work. The character of additions to it wiU depend much upon the crops selected as the money getter. For general market gardening and the kitchen garden too, the following tool list, together with the above, will include every- thing absolutely necessary. Wheel hoe $6.00 Spade and Fork, each $1.00 , 2.00 Push hoe 65 Watering can 60 Rake and common Hoe I.OO Bulb sprayer 35 Trowel 10 $10.60 The wheel hoe is a great saver — of back- ache, especially to the beginner; as Warner says, "at the best you will conclude that for gardening purposes a cast-iron back TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT "with a hinge in it is preferable to the ones now in use." The dibbel, an old tool handle or a bit of broom-stick sharpened, and garden lines to get the rpws straight, labels, to- mato supports, plant protectors and stakes can aU be home-made out of old material. The fuU outfit would include the following: RoUer $8.00 Wheel hoe with seeder 8.50 Sprayer 3.76 Wheelbarrow 4.00 Crowbar 1.50 Weeder .35 For such crops as admit of horse culti- vation a horse hoe will save a great deal of time. The weeder is a cousin to the push hoe and has a zigzag blade for cutting oflF young weeds which are just starting above ground. It is pushed backward and for- ward and cuts both ways. It is very good 143 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY for soft ground; on a harder path use the push hoe. A market garden is really a hig kitchen garden, from which the cultivator supphes not only his own family, but his neighbors, the pubHc. To run a successful market garden for profit, land suitably situated near trans- portation and markets, a large supply of stable manure, hot-beds for raising plants, crates for shipping, wagons for delivering, and a complete outfit of tools are necessary. You must raise all sorts of vegetables and salad plants in quantities sufficiently large to justify you in giving your whole time to the work. An acre devoted to general market gardening could be attended to by two men with some extra help for mar- keting. To get a place fully established on new, rich land requires two or three years. On worn-out land it would take longer to build it up to the high fertility needed for maxi- mum production. Crops hke asparagus and TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT rhubarb take two years to establish on a remunerative basis. If bush fruits are raised, three years are required to get maximum results. So in starting, land should be bought outright or leased for ten years. In market gardening for profit, one acre might be devoted to vegetables, one acre to small fruits'; strawberries, raspberries, black- berries, currants, gooseberries, etc., and one acre kept for buildings, poultry, cow, horse lot, etc. An energetic man could clear one thousand dollars a year besides his living, after he got a start, and be absolutely independent; that is, unless some predatory railroad corporation could confiscate his profits before his product reached the market. Some persons are just naturally so suc- cessful with plants that if they stuck an umbrella in the ground we should expect to see it blossom out into parasols — ^but they don't know why it does, and they can't teach anyone else how to do it. 145 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Any fool can sneer at "book farming" or at anything else, but you can hardly succeed without the best books by practical men. Do not let some experienced ignora- mus talk you out of experimenting under their guidance. You wiQ learn little with- out experience, and unless you have the grower's instinct, you wUl learn less with- out books. Don't be hypnotized by long experience or by success. Hardly anybody knows his own business. You must have noticed that few of the people you buy of or sell to, know any more of their goods than you do. It is just the same with trades. Hardly a barber knows that he should not shave you against the grain of the skin. That is a good way of scaling fish, not of smooth- ing the face; but the barber never thought of that. We lawyers and the doctprs are supposed to be thorough in our own field — I said 146 TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT lately to one of the ablest men at the New York Bar, "About one lawyer in a hun- dred knows his business." He said, "That is a gross overestimate." Shortly after I talked with three Judges, one of the City Court, one of the Supreme Court, and one of the United States Circuit, and they each agreed that my friend's remark was about true, and that in most cases litigants would do as well without lawyers as with them. If that is true, what chance is there that an uneducated man who has "raised garden sass ever since he was a boy, and seen his father do it before him," can teach you correctly. < Men learn very slowly by experience, because no two experiences are exactly alike, rniless they perceive and apply the principles under the experience. An intelligent man accustomed to inves- tigation can learn more about a specialty in a week's study than an untrained prac- titioner can believe in a year. 147 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY What the untrained teacher can tell us is of little account; what he shows us is another matter. Therefore get help who know that they don't know anything about a garden and who consequently will do with a will exactly what you teU them to do; such labor is cheap — why should you pay extravagant prices for skill to a man who has suc- ceeded so poorly that he can earn only day's wages. You can get much better knowl- edge at less cost from a book.^ Study and put your knowledge into practice yourself, where you see promise of a profit. Almost every crop can be made a spe- cialty. In proportion as special crops are profitable when conditions are right, so are they sources of loss when things go wrong. If, after your first season in the country, some special crop takes your fancy, give extra space and time to it the second year and see if you are successful in handling ' See Appendix D for list 148 TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT an eighth or a quarter acre. If so, you may extend your operations as rapidly as purse and market permit. Before concentrating upon any crop as the chief source of income, a careful study must be made of all the conditions sur- rounding its production; a crop is not pro- duced in the broad meaning of that term until it is actually in the hands of the consumer. Potatoes, for instance, are grown by the hundred acres in sections adapted to their growth, and special machinery costing hundreds of dollars is used in planting, cultivating, and harvesting the crop. The good shipping and keeping quahties of the potato enables it to be raised far from markets and so brings into competition cheap land worked in large areas, with large capital. In spite of this, however, the small cultivator can usually make money if he can sell his potatoes directly to the consumer. 149 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY If your land is so situated that you can put your individuality into the crop and can control all the circumstances, prepara- tion of land, planting, cultivation, harvest- ing, and marketing, your chances of success are immeasurably increased. So soon as any important part must be trusted to someone beyond your control, danger arises. Assiduous care in planting, cultivating, and packing will avail nothing if the product falls into the hands of transportation com- panies or commission merchants indifferent as to what becomes of it. It is therefore better to be quite independent, sell your own crop, and have the whole operation in your own hands from the very beginning. Generally speaking, seed growing for the market is a highly developed special busi- ness which is usually carried on by com- panies operating with large capital, able to employ the best experts, and to avail them- selves of all the advantages of scientific methods in culture, regardless of expense. 150 TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT So uncertain is the business, that even with all these facihties, they rarely guarantee seeds. It is obvious that the amateur has httle chance of succeeding in such a diffi- cult business. Nevertheless, he wiU be able after a few seasons of increasing expe- rience to gather seeds from selected plants and so furnish his own supply. It must be borne in mind, however, that plants can be improved by cross breeding and that by keeping a variety too long on the same ground its quality deteriorates, and the plant tends to revert to the type natural to it before domestication. When land is cropped every season, the nitrogen, potash, and phosphorous removed from the soil must be replaced in some form, otherwise you have diminishing re- turns, while the charge for labor is the same. In farming small areas for spe- cialties you cannot easily invoke the prin- ciple of rotation by enriching the land with legumes, the bacteria on the roots of which 161 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY gather nitrogen from the air, but you must get stable manure or buy chemical ferti- lizers to maintain the fertility. Special crops divide themselves naturally into two classes: those raised for immediate shipment to market, and those to be hauled to canneries. The first type are generally prepared in a more expensive way, and need more care and attention. Each class requires its own special forms of packages, to conform to market peculiarities fixed by the taste of consumers. For the cultivation of all specialties, many items of preparation are identical. Land must be well drained, it must contain a sufficient amount of humus, or decaying vegetable matter, to make it loose and porous; it must be free from sticks and stones or any foreign matter likely to im- pede cultivation or obstruct growth. The proper formation of a seed bed is a prime prerequisite to successful cropping. After the land is manured and plowed, it should 15S TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT be gone over in all directions with a disc and smoothing harrow, until it is of a dust- like jSneness. In thorough cultivation before the crop is planted, lies the secret of many a suc- cess, and in its neglect the cause of many failures. Intelligent handling of crops is in a large measure knowledge of the in- fluence of wind and rain, sunshine and darkness, on the particular nature of the plant. Dehcate plants, for example, ought to be grown where buildings or forests break the force of prevailing winds. Shel- tered vaUeys in irrigated sections have proven the best for intensive cultivation. For thousands of years in China and Japan the conditions of successful intensive cultiva- tion have been well understood, and to-day the most efficient gardeners are the Chinese. In some parts of Mexico, for the same reasons, intensive cultivation has reached a high development. In our own West we are catching up on vegetables and fruits. 163 CHAPTER X THE ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL WE have seen what a worker with very little money can do and how he can succeed. A small capital, however, can be used to increase the returns to as great advantage on a small farm as large capital can be used on a large farm and with much less risk. Stable manure is stUl the favorite article with the masses of gardeners. One ton of ordinary stable manure contains about 1,275 poimds of organic matter, carrying eight pounds of nitrogen, ten pounds of potash, and four pounds of phosphoric acid. When thoroughly rotted, the manure ac- quires a stiU larger percentage of plant food; it is more valuable, not only for that reason, but also on account of its immediate 154 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL availability. Further, the mechanical effect of this manure in opening and loosening the soU, allowing air and warmth to enter more freely, adds greatly to its value. It is easily gotten and often goes wholly or in part to waste. The United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 133, says: "On the outskirts of every town in Oklahoma may be seen a collection of manure piles that have been hauled out and dumped in waste places. The plant food in each ton of this manure is worth at least two dollars — that is what Eastern farmers pay for similar material, and they make money by doing it. And yet, almost every liveryman has to pay someone for hauling the manure away. This is simply because farmers living near these towns are missing a chance to secure something for nothing — because, perhaps, the profit is not directly in sight. But from most soils there is a handsome profit possible from a very small application of stable manure." 155 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY While writing this, I saw a man in New 'Rochelle, N. Y., dumping a load of street sweepings into a hole in a vacant lot. It would have been less wasteful to have dumped a bushel of potatoes into the hole. "Commercial fertilizers are coming more and more in use with the market gardeners, and with reason. If we examine a good fertilizer, analyzing five per cent, available nitrogen, six per cent, phosphoric acid and 8 per cent, potash, we shall find that one ton of it contains, besides less valuable in- gredients : 100 lbs. Nitrogen at 18 cents $18.00 130 lbs. Phosphoric Acid at 8 cents 9.60 160 lbs. Potash at S cents 8.00 $35.60 Such fertilizers probably retaU at forty to forty-two dollars per ton, and are fuUy worth it. All this plant food, and perhaps one-half more, can perhaps be drawn in a single load, while it wiU take ten such loads 166 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL of stable manure to supply the same amount of plant food. "There is no reason to fear evil from too much fertilizer, provided it is evenly dis- tributed and thoroughly mixed through properly prepared soil. Stinginess in this item is poor economy." ("How to Make the Garden Pay," Greiner.) Nitrogen is the most essential food for plant growth. It is an important element of plant food in manure. In ordinary manure most of the value is due to the nitro- gen, although phosphoric acid and potash are also present. It is found in the most available form in nitrate of soda. "Nitrate of soda will benefit all crops alike, but it does not follow that it wiU pay to use it on all crops. Its cost makes it unprofitable to use on cheap crops; but on those that yield a large return nitrate of soda is a very profitable investment. It is the cheapest and best form to apply nitrogen to plants." ("Nitrate of Soda," Joseph Harris.) 157 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "It is shown in the experiments con- ducted with nitrate of soda on different crops that in the case of grain and forage crops, which utilized the nitrate quite as completely as the market garden crops, the increased value of crops due to nitrate does not in any case exceed $14 per acre, or a money return at the rate of $8.50 per 100 pounds of nitrate used, while in the case of the market-garden crops the value of the increased yield reaches, in the case of one crop, the high figure of over $263 per acre, or at the rate of about $66 per 100 pounds of nitrate." (New Jersey Agricultural Ex- periment Stations, page 8, No. 172.) Professor Voorhees, of the same Station, experimented with tomatoes, with these results: Manure and fertilizer Cost per Value of crop used per acre acre per acre No Manure $371.88 30 tons Barnyard Manure $30.00 291.7fi 8 tons Manure and 400 lbs. Fertilizer 15.00 317.63 160 lbs. Nitrate of Soda alone 4.00 361.13 158 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL Such common crops as tomatoes, cabbage> turnips, beets, etc., in order to be highly profitable, must be grown and harvested early; anyone can grow them in their regu- lar season; their growth must be promoted or forced as much as possible, at the time when the natural agencies are not active in the change of soil nitrogen into available forms, and the plants must, therefore, be supplied artificially with the active forms of nitrogen, if a rapid and continuous growth is to be maintained. It is quite possible to have a return of $50 per acre from the use of $5 worth of nitrate of soda on crops of high value, as, for example, early tomatoes, beets, cabbage, etc. This is an extraordinary return for the money and labor invested; stiU, if the increased value of the crop were but $10, or even $8, it would be a profitable invest- ment, since no more land and but little capital was required in order to obtain the extra $5 or $8 per acre. 159 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY The results of all the experiments con- ducted in different parts of the country and in different seasons, show an average gain in yield of early tomatoes of about fifty per cent., with an average increased value of crop of about $100 per acre. The rest of the report shows similar results with other crops. (New Jersey Agricultural Ex- periment Station, Bulletin 172.) Joseph Harris says, "Eight years ago we used nitrate of soda cautiously as a top dressing on the celery plants. The effect was astonishing. The next year, having more confidence, we spread the nitrate at the time we sowed the seed, and again after the plant came up, and twice after- ward during a rain. "Instead of finding it difficult to get the plants early enough for the celery growers who set them out, they were ready three weeks before the usual time of trans- planting. "At the four applications, we probably 160 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL used 1,600 lbs. of nitrate of soda per acre, and this would probably furnish more ni- tric acid to the plaints than they could get from five hundred tons of manure per acre, provided it had been possible to have worked such a quantity into the soil. Never were finer plants grown. As compared with the increased value of the plants, the cost of the nitrate is not worth taking into consideration." As a means of fertilization without the use of artificial fertilizer, soil inoculation has come. It has grown out of the dis- coveries made within the last few years, of the dependence of leguminous plants on bacteria which live on their roots. The dis- covery is described by scientists as one of the most important of those made in modern agriculture. It was first worked out in Germany, but has. received its greatest impetus in America, under the experiments of Professor Moore of the United States Agricultural De- partment. 161 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY The Department is supplying free to farmers the bacteria for inoculation. A large laboratory has been fitted up for the work. The method is to propagate bacteria for each of the various leguminous plants such as clover, alfalfa, soy beans, cow peas, tares, and velvet beans. All of these plants are of incalculable value in different sec- tions of the country as forage for farm animals. In the west, alfalfa is the main reliance for stock raisers. The farmers of the East are trying to establish it, but meet with great difficulty in doing so, chiefly for want of the special bacteria which should be found on the roots. The function of these bacteria is to gather the nitrogen of the air and supply it as plant food. Without the bacteria the plant can get only the nitrogen which is supplied from the soil in fertilizers. With the aid of the bacteria the growing plant can de- rive the greater part of its food from the air. ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL Professor B. T. Galloway says: "The farmer has a field of cow peas to grow. He sends to the laboratory and secures a small packet of sterilized cotton fibre upon which the organisms are growing. He also receives two httle packages of chemicals, and is told to dissolve one of these in a bucket or barrel of water and then drop in the cotton containing the organisms. The next morning he mixes in the second chemical, and by simple division the germs become so numerous as to make the water nulky. This is sprinkled on the seed just before planting, and as the roots sprout the organisms find their way to them, and at once begin taking in and storing up the atmospheric nitrogen. Thus another step toward the ideal agriculture is gained, an agriculture that maintains itself, and will continue forever to give good crops, because what is taken off is put back. Here are some of the results of the use of inoculated seed as reported by the 163 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY United States Agricultural BuUetin No. 214. G. L. Thomas, experimenting with field peas on his farm near Auburn, Me., made a special test with fertilized and unfer- tilized strips, and stated that "inoculated seed did as much without fertilizers of anj' kind, as uninoculated seed supplied with fertilizer (phosphate) at the rate of 800 pounds and a ton of barnyard manure per acre.'* Federico Narro, of SaltUlo, Mexico, noted the following results: "I have seen the progress of the inocu- lated alfalfa in the fields of J. Garcia Rodriguez, and, although failure was ex- pected by the people who knew that he was going to sow alfalfa without manure, it is already coming out nicely and more even than the alfalfa sown in land covered with eight or ten inches of manure." This seems to be only in its infancy. The Department warns us that nitrogen inoculation is useless where the soil already 164 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL has enough nitrogen and where other plant foods are absent. The experiments are most important, and we are probably on the eve of as great advances in agriculture as in electricity, but the hmnan race has a great love for "in- oculation" and indeed for aU unnatural processes. You remember the story of the wonder- ful coon that Chandler Harris tells? No? They were constantly seeing this enormous coon, but always just as they almost got their hands on him, he disappeared. One night the boys came running in to say that the wonderful coon was up in a persimmon tree in the middle of a ten-acre lot; so they got the dogs and the lanterns and guns and ran out, and sure enough they saw the wonderful big coon up in a fork of the tree. It was a bright moonhght night, but to make doubly sure they cut down the tree and the dogs ran in — ^the coon wasn't there. 165 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "Well, but. Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "I thought you said you saw the coon there." "So we did, Honey," said the old man, "so we did; but it's very easy to see what ain't there when you're looking for it." Another method of increasing fertility at increased expense deserves notice. F. H. Newell, in "Irrigation," says, "the vacant public lands are for the most part desert- like in character, and their utilization can come about only through irrigation. One- third of the whole United States, exclusive of Alaska and outlying possessions, consists of public lands, much of which has rich soU, and under good management is capable of sustaining a large population." This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the world; and the tremendous volumes of water that flow from the mountains to the sea, once harnessed and piped or ditched to this land, will transform it into beautiful gardens and farms. 166 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL With the work being done by the United States Government, and that of the various states, we may look forward in the not distant future to this land being made habitable to man. With the population that will occupy it, relief may be expected in the over-crowded portions of the country. It is well known that with the dry, even climate and with an abundance of water applied as vegetation needs, this now arid waste is far more productive than the Eastern states, where the crops are at the mercy of the elements, sometimes having too much moisture and at other times not having enough. "Irrigation offers control of conditions such as is found nowhere except in green- house culture. The farmer in the humid country cannot control the amount of starch in potatoes, sugar in beets, protein in corn, gluten in wheat, except by planting varie- ties which are especially adapted to the production of the desired quality. The irri- 167 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY gation farmer, on the other hand, can produce this or that desirable quality by the control of the moisture supply to the plant. He can hasten or retard maturity of the plant, produce early truck or late truck on the same soil, grow wheat or grow rice as he deems advisable." "On the irrigated fields of Vosges, the Vaucluse, etc., in France, six tons of dry hay becomes the rule, even upon ungrate- ful soil; and this means considerably more than the annual food of one mUch cow (which can be taken as a little less than five tons) grown on each acre." "The irrigated meadows round Milan are another weU-known example. Nearly 22,- 000 acres are irrigated there with water derived from the sewers of the city, and they yield crops of from eight to ten tons of hay as a rule; occasionally some separate meadows will yield the fabulous amount — fabulous to-day but no longer fabulous to-morrow — of eighteen tons of hay per 168 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL acre; that is, the food of nearly four cows to the acre, and nine times the yield of good meadows in this country." (P. Kro- potkin's "Fields, Factories, and Work- shops," pages 116-117.) "If irrigation pays" — and no one now questions that — "the whole Western country of rich soil, which asks but a drink now and then, wUl be turned into a Garden of Eden." {MaxtaelVs Talisman.) Agriculture may be revolutionized with the advent of irrigation. A new method of disposing of sewage and at the same time irrigating the soil, has come into use recently, and wiU be found valuable to those who are situated so that they can make use of it. The sewage from buildings is drained into a large tank where the heavier matter can settle to the bottom. When the water rises nearly to the top of the tank it is siphoned into another tank, and from there it is piped about the field. 169 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY It is a very simple process — ordinary drain tile conveys the water. Beginning at the highest point of the field to be irri- gated, a six inch (or larger) Une of tile should be laid along the highest ground Mdth a fall of not over one inch to each ten feet. From this main trunk should be branch lines of "laterals," laid from eight to twelve feet apart, as they would be laid for draining a field. These branch lines may be laid at an angle to the main trunk as may be most convenient; all the joints must be covered so as to keep out the dirt. The whole system should be laid deep enough in the ground to be secure from frost; but to be most effective it should not be over fourteen to sixteen inches be- low the surface, hence sub-irrigation cannot be used very successfully in the Northern states. In a sandy loam soil with a clay sub-soil it works best at sixteen to twenty- four inches. This is substantially Colonel Waring's 170 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL method of sewage disposal. To get the best use of it for plants, the water should be assembled and kept in the sun for ten to twelve days, then turned into the pipes until the ground is well soaked, and then shut off and not allowed in the pipes again for ten to fifteen days, according to the weather and condition of moisture in the soil. The crop should be cultivated be- tween each watering. However, as Bailey says, "Evidently in aU regions in which crops will yield abun- dantly without irrigation, as in the East, the main rehance is to be placed on good tillage." "Most vegetable gardeners in the East do not find it profitable to irrigate. Now and then a man who has push and the ability to handle a fine crop to advantage, finds it a very profitable undertaking." ("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 174.) The late J. M. Smith, Green Bay, Wis- 171 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY consin, was one of the expert market gar- deners of his region. "The longer I live," wrote Mr. Smith, then in the midst of a serious drought, "the more firmly am I convinced that plenty of manure and then the most complete system of cultivation make an almost complete protection against droughts of an ordinary character." (Same, page 330.) We are just beginning to realize that if the soil is cultivated carefully and inten- sively, it will hold water within itself and carry a storage reservoir underneath the growing crop. Finely pulverizing and pack- ing the seed-bed, makes it capable of re- taining the greatest possible percentage of the moisture that falls, just as a tumbler full of fine sponge or of bird-shot will retain many times the amount of water that a tumbler fuU of buck-shot will. The atmosphere quickly drinks up the moisture from the soil unless we prevent it. This we do by means of a soil "blanket," called 172 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL a "mulch." This finely pulverized surface in a large measure prevents the moisture helow from evaporating; and at the same time keeps the surface in such condition that it readily absorbs the dew and the showers. Water moves in the soil as it does in a lamp wick, by capillary attraction; the more deeply and densely the soil is satu- rated with moisture, the more easily the water moves upward, just as oil "chmbs up" a wet wick faster than it does a dry one. One can illustrate the effect of this fine soil "mulch" in preventing evaporation by placing some powdered sugar on a Imnp of loaf sugar and putting the lump sugar in water. The powdered sugar wiU remain dry even when the lump has become so thoroughly saturated that it crumbles to pieces. (Condensed from The World To- Bay, October, 1906.) "We have no useless American acres," said Secretary WUson. "We shall make them all productive. We have agricultural THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY explorers in every far corner of the world; and they are finding crops which have be- come so acclimated to dry conditions, simi- lar to our own West, that we shall in time have plants thriving upon our so-caUed arid lands. We shall cover this arid area with plants of various sorts which will yield hundreds of millions of tons of additional forage and grains for Western flocks and herds. Our farmers will grow these upon land now considered practically worthless." In this way it has been estimated that in the neighborhood of one hundred million acres of the American desert can be re- claimed to the most intensive agriculture. Frederick V. Coville, the chief botanist of the Department of Agriculture, does not hesitate to say that in the strictly arid regions there are many millions of acres, now considered worthless for agriculture, which are as certain to be settled in small farms as were the lands of Illinois. Land that was thought to be absolute 174 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL desert has been made to yield heavy crops of grain and forage by this method with- out irrigation. Macaroni wheat will grow with ten inches of rainfall, and yield fifteen bushels to the acre. This is two bushels more than the average wheat yield in the United States. Much can be done by dry farming; that is, by plowing the soil very deep and cultivating six or eight times a season, thus retaining all the moisture for the crops and reducing evaporation to a minimum. There are thousands of acres in different sections of Montana that grow good crops without irrigation. In Fergus County, for instance, the wonderful yield of 45 bushels of wheat per acre, is grown without irri- gation. Heavy crops of grain and vege- tables are grown in the vicinity of Great Falls by the dry farming system. The money and time spent in spraying is also well invested. The New York Ag- ricultural Experiment Station began a ten- 176 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY year experiment in potato-spraying to de- termine how much the yield can be increased by spraying with Bordeaux mixture. In 1904 the gain due to spraying was larger than ever before. Five sprayings increased the yield 233 bushels per acre, while three sprayings increased it 191 bushels. The gain was due chiefly to the prolongation of growth through the pre- vention of late blight. The sprayed pota- toes contained one-ninth more starch and were of better quality. The average increase of profit per acre from spraying potatoes was figured to be about $22 on each acre. The result was arrived at from experiment, two-thirds of which was by independent farmers. (Par- ticulars will be found in Bulletin No. 264, issued for gratuitous distribution by the Department.) In fourteen farmers' business experi- ments, including 180 acres of potatoes, the average gain due to spraying was 62^^ 176 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL bushels per acre, the average total cost of spraying, 93 cents per acre; and the average net profit, based on the market price of potatoes at digging time, $24.86 per acre. "One class of gardeners," Burnet Lan- dreth explains, "may be termed experi- mental farmers, men tired of the humdrum rotation of farm processes and small profits, men looking for a paying diversification of their agricultural interests. Their expenses for appliances are not great, as they have already on hand the usual stock of farm tools, requiring only one or two seed driUs, a small addition to their cultivating imple- ments, and a few tons of fertilizers. Their laborers and teams are always on hand for the working of moderate areas. In addi- tion to the usual expense of the farm, they would not need to have a cash capital of beyond 20 to 25 dollars per acre for the area in truck." "Other men, purchasing or renting land, especially for market gardening, taking 177 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY only improved land of suitable aspect, soil, and situation, and counting in cost of building, appliances and labor, would re- quire a capital of $80 to $100 per acre. For example, a beginner in market-garden- ing in South Jersey, on a five-acre patch, would need $500 to set up the business, and run it until his shipments began to return him money. With the purpose of securing information on this interesting point, the writer asked for estimates from market gardeners in different localities, and the result has been that from Florida the reports of the necessary capital per acre, in land or its rental (not of labor), ferti- lizers, tools, implements, seed and all the appliances, average $95, from Texas $45, from Illinois $70, from the Norfolk dis- trict of Virginia the reports vary from $75 to $125, according to location, and from Long Island, New York, the average of estimates at the east end is $75, and at the west end $150." 178 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL I have before me now one of the roseate advertisements, which we so often see in the newspapers, telling how fortunes can be made by investing a few doUars in a trop- ical plantation in Mexico. It gives what are supposed to be start- ling yields per acre, and yet the returns, which must necessarily be taken with con- siderable allowance, are only from $580 to $1,087 per acre on various plantations. There are market gardeners and nursery- men near New York City who are making their acres produce better returns than this. It is not necessary to go off into the trop- ical wilderness seeking a fortune which is usually a gold brick that some fellow is trying to sell you, when as good results can be secured right at home. JNIarket gardeners in and near Philadel- phia pay $25 to $50 an acre rent for land, and work from five to forty acres. This is as much as similar land in many parts of the country could be bought for. But 179 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY it is not a high rent when they are right at the market — one man makes the round trip in two and one-half hours — manure costs them nothing — for years they have been using the excavations from the old style pri^y wells, which has been hauled to their farm and deposited where they wished it, free. They have modern facilities, such as troUey and telephone, and are as much city men as any clerk in an office. They clear far higher profits from an acre than the average farmer, raising never less than two, and often three crops in a sea- son. They employ several men to the acre, and at certain times many more, working the men in gangs. Only the difficulty of gettiog good help at their prices prevents them from using twice the number. However, the possibilities of putting capital into land at a profit are stUl infinite. "What chiefly attracts the gardener to the gre^t cities, is stable manure; and this is not wanted so much for increasing the 180 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL richness of the soil — one-ninth part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that purpose — ^but for keeping the soil at a certain temperature. Early vege- tables pay best, and in order to obtain early produce, not only the air, but the soil as well, must be warmed; and that is done by putting great quantities of prop- erly mixed manure into the soil; its fermen- tation heats it. But it is evident that with the present development of industrial skill, the heating of the soil could be obtained more economically and more easily by hot- water pipes. Consequently, the French gardeners begin more and more to make use of portable pipes, or thermosiphons, provisionally established in the cool frames. This new improvement becomes of general use, and we have the authority of Barral's Dictionnaire d'Agriculture to affirm that it gives excellent results." (P. Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories and Workshops," page 77.) 181 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Competition that stands in with the rail- roads can be met only by being near the market or having water transportation. In- deed, the eflfect of water transportation in getting manure, and in delivering the pro- ducer from the railroads, appears in the early history of trucking. The railroads often crush out boat competition by absorb- ing docks and standing in with the com- mission men. This could be met by such co-operative selling agencies as the flower growers already have. "One of the earliest centers for the de- velopment of truck farming in its present sense was along the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where fast saiUng oyster boats were employed for sending the produce to the neighboring markets of Baltimore and Phila- delphia. In a similar way the gardeners about New York early began pushing out along Long Island, using the waters of the Sound for transporting their produce. The trucking region on the eastern shore 182 ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL of Lake Michigan is another sample of the effect of convenient water transportation in causing an early development of this industry. The building of the Illinois Cen- tral railrdad opened up a region in southern Illinois that was supposed to be particularly adapted to fruit growing." ("Develop- ment of the Trucking Interests," by F. S. Earle, page 439.) If one goes into the trucking business on so large a scale as to be able to make deals with the railroads, such as The Stand- ard Oil Company makes, of course addi- tional prices could be gotten owing to the possibility of putting competitors at a dis- advantage. That business is a large one. In doing business on this scale, much will depend on your ability as a merchant. "It is useless to grow good crops unless they can be sold at a profit; yet it is safe to say that ten men grow good truck crops for one who markets them to the best advantage." 183 CHAPTER XI HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES WHETHER to get an early start on the garden or for raising plants for field crops, a hot-bed is all but indispensable. In making a hot-bed what we seek to do is, to imitate Nature at her best, so get the best soil and the sunniest spot you can find. In all hot-beds the underlying principle is the same: They are right-angled boxes covered with glass planes set in movable frames and placed over heated excavations. The bed may be of any size or shape, but the standard one is six feet wide, since the stock glass frames are usually six feet long by three feet wide. You can have any length needed to supply your requirements. "Tomato Culture," by A. J. Root, tells us 184 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES that the cheapest plan is to get some old planks, broken brickbats or stone, and piece together a box-like affair in proper shape: to provide drainage, the front should be at least ten inches above the ground and the rear fourteen inches. A hot-bed knocked together in this way is all right to start with, if you cannot do any better, but will last only two or three seasons. For a per- manent bed, probably the best way is to make cement walls extending to the bottom of the manure. The bed ought to face south or southeast and be weU protected on the north. It should be banked all around with earth or straw to keep out the cold, and mats or shutters should be provided for extra cold weather. The best material for heating the bed and the most easily obtained, is fresh horse manure in which there is a quantity of straw or litter. This will give out a slow, moist heat and will not burn out before the crops or the plants mature. Get all the manure you need at 185 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY one time. Pile it in a dry place and let it ferment; every few days work the pile over thoroughly with a dung fork; sometimes two turnings of the manure are enough, but it is better to let it stand and heat three or fovir times. "You can make a hot-bed also on top of the ground without any excavation. Spread a layer of manure evenly one foot in depth and large enough to extend around the frame three feet each way. Pack this down well, especially around the edge, put on a second and third layer until you have a well-trodden and compact bed of manure at least two and one-half feet in depth. Place the frame in the center of this bed and press it down well." A two-inch layer of decayed leaves, cut straw, or corn fodder spread over the manure in the frame and weU packed down, will help to retain the heat. Ventilate the bed every day to allow steam and ammonia fumes to pass off. "The soil inside should be equal parts of 186 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES garden loam and well-rotted barnyard ma- nure. Tramp well the first layer of three inches. To make it entirely safe for the plant seeds in the hot-bed, add another layer of the same dfepth. Use no water with garden loam and manure if you can possibly help it." "Before sowing any seeds put a ther- mometer in the bed three inches deep in the soil. If it runs over 80 degrees Fahren- heit, do not sow. If below 55 degrees it is too cold; you wlQ have to fork it over and add more manure. If the bed gets too hot, you can ventilate it with a sharp stick by thrusting it down into the soil." Another way that the old gardeners have to make a hot-bed is with fire. On a large scale this is cheaper though more com- phcated than the fermentation of manure. In making this kind choose your location and build the frames as before. "Cut a trench with a shght taper from the east end of the plot to the end of the hot-bed, 18T THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY and on under the ground to about four feet beyond the end of the bed. This taper to the outlet will create a draught and so keep a better fire. Arch this over with vitrified tile. The furnace end where the fire is should be about six feet away from the bed. When the trenches are completed, cover over with the dirt that was taken out of them. Two such trenches under the frames will make a good hot- bed. Anyone can do this sort of work." A hot-bed can also be heated by running steam pipes through the ground, but unless you happen to be where exhaust steam could be used, this method is not econom- ical except for big houses. The care and expense of a separate steam plant would be too great to pay, unless for growing winter vegetables for market or flower cul- ture. If you go into that on a scale large enough to pay, new problems at once de- mand solution. Vegetables under glass have kept pace 188 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES with other crops. Within fifteen nules of Boston are two rmllion square feet of glass devoted to vegetables, chiefly lettuce. There are no less than five milhon feet in the United States used for vegetables. Ordinarily, under favorable conditions, glass devoted to this work will yield an average of fifty cents per year per square foot. About the lowest estimate of cost per sash is four dollars; this amount includes the cost of one-fourth of the frame and covers. A well-made mortised plank frame costs four to five dollars. A sash, un- glazed, costs from one to one doUar twenty- five. Glazing costs seventy-five cents. Mats and shutters cost from fifty cents to one dollar per sash, depending upon the ma- terial used. These prices vary greatly, however. The following sample estimate by a gar- dener is for a market garden of one acre, in which it is desired to grow a general line of vegetables. It supposes that half 189 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY of the acre is to be set with plants from hot-beds. One-eighth acre to early cauliflower and cabbage, about 2,000 plants, if transplanted, would require two 6 x 12 frames, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty plants being grown under each sash, there being four sashes in each frame. These frames may be used again for tomato plants for the same area, using about 450 plants. This wUl allow a sash for every 55 plants. One frame should be in use at the same time for eggplants and peppers, two sashes of each, growing fifty transplanted plants under each sash. Two frames will be required for cu- cumbers, melons, and early squashes; for extra early lettuce, an estimate of sixty to seventy heads should be made to a sash. It is assumed that celery and late cabbages are to be started in seed-beds in the open. In the fashionable suburbs of Boston, 190 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES "one hot-bed 3x6 feet was used in which to start the seeds of early vegetables. Plantings were made in the open ground as soon as the weather permitted, and were continued at intervals throughout the season whenever there was a vacant spot in the garden. The following varieties of vege- tables, mostly five and ten-cent packets, were planted: Pole and wax beans, beets, kale, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, corn, cucumbers, corn salad, endive, egg- plant, kohlrabi, lettuce, muskmelon, onions, peppers, peas, salsify, radish, spinach, squash, tomatoes, turnips, rutabagas, escarole, chives, shallot, parsley, sweet and Irish potatoes, and nearly a dozen different kinds of sweet herbs." "In the larger garden, tomatoes followed peas, turnips the wax beans, early lettuce for faU use took the place of Refugee beans. Corn salad succeeded lettuce." "The spinach was followed by cabbage, while turnips, beets, carrots, celery, and 191 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY spinach gave a second crop in the plot oc- cupied by Gardus peas and Emperor Wil- liam beans." "Winter radishes came after telephone peas, Paris Golden celery was planted in between the hills of Stowell's blanching. The plot of early corn was sown to tur- nips. The hot-bed was used during the late fall and winter to store some of the hardy vegetables, and the latter part of October there was placed in it some endive, escarole, celeriac, and the remaining space was filled up by transplanting leeks, chives, and par- sley." (Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 38.) "If spinach is grown in frames, the sash used for one of the late crops above may be used through the following winter. "This, like the last case, makes a total of five frames, the cost, depending on make and material, from one to five doUars; twenty sash and covers, at, say, $2.75, $55; manure at market price, calculating at least 192 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES three or four loads per frame. This is a liberal estimate of space, and should allow for all ordinary loss of plants, and for dis- carding the weak and inferior ones. It supposes that most or aU of the plants are to be transplanted once or more in the frames. Many gardeners have less equip- ment of glass." (Same, p. 49-50.) Growing vegetables under glass gives smaller returns than flowers; as, for in- stance, a head of lettuce brings much less than a plant of carnations, and suffers more from the competition of southern crops. Nevertheless, the greenhouse-grown vegetables have come into prominence lately because they can be raised in houses that are not good enough for flowers. Lettuce and tomatoes are the principal crop, some growers raise thousands of dollars' worth each year. The greenhouse is also used for forcing plants which are afterwards trans- planted to the open air. This develops them at a time when they could not grow 193 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY outdoors and gives them such a start that they are very early on the market, thereby realizing the highest prices. "Vegetable hot-houses," according to the Twelfth United States Census, "yield an income of twenty-five to fifty cents for every square foot of bench room, the prices compared to corresponding open-air prod- ucts being as five to one." "Nearness to market is the most im- portant feature in a greenhouse. In large cities, manure, which is the chief fertilizer, can be had in most cases for the hauling. The short haul is an important item, and, most important of all, the gardener who is near the market can take advantage of high prices, if the grower is near enough to the city to make two or three trips; in such a fluctuating market as New York, it is to his advantage." Some kind of a greenhouse is necessary, but one large enough to produce a living would cost a very large sum. Vegetable 194 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES raising under glass has been made profitable in special localities where nearly the whole community gives its time to building up the industry, but complete success can be attained only by having absolute control of all the conditions entering into production, and giving assiduous and undivided atten- * * tion to detail. Leonard Barron, in the Garden Maga- zine for August, 1906, says that "The best type of greenhouse for aU-round purposes is unquestionably what is known as the even span — that is, a house in which the roof is in the form of an inverted V, so as to be exposed as much as possible to sunlight, and having the ridge-pole in the centre. All other types of houses are modi- fications from the simplest form, and are designed in some way or other to fit some special requirements. These requirements may be: the cultural necessities for some particular crop; a desire to have the at- mospheric conditions inside more or less 195 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY abnormal at given seasons (as in a forcing- house) ; or an adaptation to some pecu- liarity of the situation, as when a green- house is buUt as an adjunct to other buildings," "It is plain common sense that the ideal greenhouse is one in which the light is most nearly that which exists outside, and in which the heat is as evenly distributed. It is practical experience that a "structure with as few angles and turns in it as pos- sible and with a minimum of woodwork in its superstructure, best answers these condi- tions Greenhouse building has developed into a special industry, and the modern American greenhouse is the highest type of construction. It is buUt with as careful calculation to its situation and its require- ments as is the country dwellinghouse. Such a thing naturally is not a cheap thing. "The low-priced 'cheap greenhouse' is a makeshift of some sort. Perhaps its roof is constructed of hot-bed sash, a perfectly 196 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES feasible method of construction, which for ordinary, commonplace gardening will an- swer admirably. Or, its foundation is merely the plain earth. Such a building does admirably in the summer time, and even in the late spring and early autumn, but woe betide the enthusiastic amateur in winter, who, being possessed of one of these light greenhouse structures, has in- dulged in a few costly, exotic plants. They will be frozen, to a certainty! It is economy to pay a fair price in the beginning to secure a properly built greenhouse that will withstand the trials of winter. "The limiber for a house may be esti- mated roughly at about three dollars per hnear foot, and the glass at one doUar fifty per foot. Carpentering and other labor will vary from two dollars and fifty to three dollars a foot; and together with heating, a house twenty feet long may be erected for possibly two hundred and fifty doUars. If iron frame is used instead of 197 THREE ACRES AKD LIBERTY wood, there is greater durability, and the structure being more slender, wiU admit more light, but the cost will be increased." "It makes very little difference in cost what shape of house is to be erected. The cost per lineal foot for an even span is practically the same as for a lean-to of the same length and width. In the lean-to, in order to get the sufficient bench and walk space inside, it is necessary to carry the roof to a point much higher than in the even span. The extra framework and ma- terial for the roof cost a good deal, yet add practically nothing to the efficiency of the house." "Heating of greenhouses is best done by hot water, and in a small house the pipes may weU be connected with the heating system used for the dwelling, if the green- house and the home are within any sort of reasonable distance from each other. For large houses, or ranges of several houses together, the independent heating plant is 198 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES necessary. Steam is used for heating by commercial florists, but it is economical only on a large scale." "As a uniform degree of temperature must be maintained in the house, the fires, where steam is used, need watching contin- uously during cold weather, for the moment the water ceases to boil, the pipes cool off, and some considerable time is consumed in starting the heat running again. "With hot water there is much more latitude in attention, for though the fires dwindle, the water which fills the pipes wiU carry heat for a long time, and it will circulate until the last degree is radiated. But a hot- water system costs in the installation about one-fourth more than steam. Very small houses may be successfully heated by kero- sene stoves, which may be placed inside the house. A much better way would be to use oil heaters for an inside water circula- tion, carrying off all products of combus- tion by means of a flue. Coal stoves should 199 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY never be installed inside the house. It has been done successfully by some amateurs, but the danger of coal gas being driven back into the house by a down draft in the chimney is too great a risk. Coal gas and illuminating gas are two virulent poisons to plants." It is obvious that the amateur must pro- ceed with great caution in undertaking in- tensive cultivation under glass. Build at first the simplest and least expensive kind of hot-beds or greenhouses. It takes three to five seasons to train even an experienced farmer along these special lines. Separate crops require special treatment. Do not experiment but follow well-tried procedure. It is entirely possible to farm an acre un- der glass, but it should be worked up to, each step being taken only after a sohd foundation is ready to build on. Learn by your mistakes. Don't get discouraged by failure. By not making the same mis- take twice, you will soon learn by experi- 200 HOT-BEDS AND GREENHOUSES ence just what is essential to production. The more you leana about the way nature does things, the more likely you will be to succeed when you seek to imitate her. SOI CHAPTER XII OTHER USES OF LAND WE had intended to write an interest- ing chapter on the use of a few acres of land for poultry, and another on raising a vast drove of rabbits, both from practical men, but a good average man, just such as this book is written for, sent the following: "I am very sorry that I cannot comply with your request to write a chapter on poultry for your new book. It is true that I am physically and mentally capable of performing that feat, and it would be pos- sible for me to prepare an essay that might entertain the reader, and even make him believe that there is money in commercial poultry. I prefer, however, to leave that sort of romancing to the povdtry journals OTHER USES OF LAND who, by much practice, are adepts in the art. The fact is, I did not make poultry raising pay, and had I remained on my chicken ranch, I would have gone broke. I do not mean to say, however, that there is no money in poultry, but merely that I could not get it out. Perhaps others who are better equipped for the work can make a success of such an undertaking, but I could not. The numerous poultry journals are filled with instructions how to do it and with letters from people who assert that they have done well with poultry; but, reaUy, during the four years that I was in the business I cannot recaU a single case of success, and, on the other hand, I learned of failures without end. I had the reputation of having the best planned and most completely equipped plant in this part of Washington, and perhaps in the entire state. My stock was thoroughbred and healthy, and they seemed to attend to busi- ness strictly. I devoted about all my wak- THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY ing hours to them, did everything that seemed necessary that was suggested by my own success, and yet I could not make it go, am glad I am clear of it, and have no desire to try it again. I am perfectly will- ing to admit my possible unfitness for the business, but I am also compelled to admit that I could not succeed and that no ad- vice of mine could help others." Although some, either under exceptional circumstances or because of exceptional ability, have made a success of wholesale poultry raising, it seems on reflection that Mr. Wolf's ideas are in the main correct. The price of chickens is fixed, like all other prices, by supply and demand, and toward the supply every farmer contributes his chickens and their eggs which cost him practically nothing; at least he counts that they cost him nothing. 'Now it is clear that if you considerably increase the supply at any place, the price will fall, and the farmer, whose chickens 204 OTHER USES OF LAND and eggs cost him almost nothing in money, will sell them low enough to command a market and will continue to raise them, however little he gets for them. So you are against inexhaustible com- petitorc who can neither be driven out nor combined with. It is worse than compet- ing with bankrupt dealers. To make much money you must have at least some monopoly, and even a little bit of the earth that is well suited to your pur- pose where there is no unreasonable and unreasoning competition, will give you a chance. But while it is true that the farmer's subsidized hens have a very disastrous effect at times upon the market, the fact is that, notwithstanding the tariflf, we im- port millions of dozens of eggs laid each year by the pauper hens of Canada and often of Denmark. Another fact to be considered is, that it is when eggs are most plentiful that the 205 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY farmers depress the market. With their ways of handling their, poultry, their hens lay only when conditions are most favor- able, and in the winter when eggs are as high as fifty cents a dozen in cities, they have no eggs to market. Like the market gardener, to be timely in market is to succeed. A week may mean an annihila- tion of profits. It is a different proposition to raise a few chickens as a side line as the farmers do. A workman at the Connecticut place of one of the experts who has revised this book had a bit of land not more than 100 X 200 feet, and for several years cleared $100 a year by raising eggs and broUers, doing the work together with that of a httle garden of small fruits before and after working hours. The chickens fed largely on green food in summer.^ In selling your surplus at a profit, the * See Appendix C. ao6 OTHER USES OF LAND same principles apply as in raising a sur- plus to sell at a profit. While poultry and egg raising does not require that you must be first, it does re- quire that you market your produce at a time when the prices are highest. You must hatch at a time which will allow the young hens to begin laying as winter approaches; the food must keep up animal heat and the house must be warm enough to make the hens comfortable, and the conditions must be such as to keep them laying. As an experiment, we once raised six pullets. They were hatched in May, and in December they began laying. All dur- ing the winter they laid never less than four and sdmetimes six eggs a day, and kept this up until spring. They were fed on wheat and corn and plenty of meat scraps and green food. They were kept in what was practically a glass house, receiving the benefit of the 207 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY sun during the day, and were protected from the winds. The effect was to bring as near as possible the condition of the warm months; these paid very well. Ducks are less frequently raised than chickens and often realize good returns. The popular fallacy that ducks require a stream or pond is gradually passing away. There was a time when nearly aU ducks were raised in this way, feeding on fish as the principal diet, but experience has proved that ducks raised without a stream or pond tend to put on flesh in- stead of feathers, and they have not the oily, fishy flavor of those raised on the water. Nearly all of the successful duck raisers now use this method. This is bringing the duck more into prominence as an article of food; as James Rankin says in "Duck Culture," "People do not care to eat fish and flesh combined. They would rather eat them separate." The white pekins are the popular birds, 208 OTHER USES OF LAND because they are larger, have white meat, and are splendid layers. They lay from 100 to 165 eggs in a season and are the easiest to raise. They can do entirely without water; and Rankin teUs of selling a flock to a wealthy man, who afterwards wrote asking him to take them back, be- cause he had bought them for an artificial lake in front of his house, so that his wife and children could watch them disporting in the water. He complained that they would not go into the water imless he drove them in and would remain only so long as he stood over them. Ducks are easier to raise than any other fowl and are freer from disease. They are ready for market when eight weeks old. The industry is assuming large propor- tions, and ranches are now raising ducks by the tens of thousands and are finding better markets each year. In starting any poultry business, it is 209 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY better to begin with twenty-five fowls and master details with those, then double the number as fast as they have been made to return profits. The Atlantic Squab Company, of Ham- monton, N". J., says "it is a simple matter for the beginner to figure out on paper net profits of four or five dollars per year from each pair of breeders, but we doubt if it can be made. It is, however, 'pigeon nature' to lay ten or eleven times a year, but hardly natural to presume that each and every egg will ultimately mean a Jumbo squab in the commission man's hands. "A loft [that is, a pair] of high-class Homers, properly mated, should average six pair of squabs per year. For the past year our squabs have averaged us a frac- tion over 60c. per pair; say $3.60 has been the returns from each pair of breeders. It has cost us 90c. per pair to feed for the past twelve months; remember, we buy in large quantities; it would, no doubt, cost 210 OTHER USES OF LAND the small breeder $1 a year per pair to feed. It would be well to allow 60c. a pair for labor and supplies, such as grit, charcoal, tobacco stems, etc., although the bird manure, which we find ready sale for at 55c. per bushel, has covered these inci- dental expenses for us. The inexperienced beginner, with good management and close attention to details, should clear $2 a year from each pair of birds, provided he starts with well-mated pure Homer stock." Pig- eons are particular about their mates, and wiU rather go single than take a disagreeable partner. Raising Belgian hares at one time prom,- , ised to be a most profitable industry. The Belgian hare is a very distant relation of the ordinary rabbit. Its flesh is white, close-grained and tender, resembling the legs of the frog, and has a very savory flavor. It is considered by many superior to poultry, and the rapidity with which they breed gave promise of fortunes. The 211 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY doe brings forth a litter of about eleven every sixty days, and with prices ranging from $1.50 to $2.50, as they were about the year 1900, with the cost of raising from thirty to forty cents, the reason for this promise is evident. In Southern Cali- fornia .thousands turned their attention to it, and some firms entered the business with equipment to the value of fifty thou- sand dollars. Besides the ordinary market prices realized for the hares, some went extensively into breeding fancy stock, and realized from $50 to $250 apiece for them. This industry had indications of becom- ing extensive and enduring, but by 1900 so many went into the business that the markets became glutted and prices fell with disastrous effect. Whether the market shall again rise to a point where it will pay, depends largely on the attitude of the people toward the hare as a food product. 212 OTHER USES OF LAND Bee-keeping offers an interesting and re- numerative field of emplojmaent. More than the average living awaits those only who will make a careful and intelligent study of bees and their habits and will give them the proper care and attention. One need not be a practical bee-keeper to enter this field. He can purchase even one hive and, while increasing from this, he can gain an experience that he could get in no other way. How shall one start bee-keeping? Get one hive or a few hives. If you have no room in the yard, put them upon the roof. One man in Cincinnati, Ohio, makes his hving from bees kept on the roof of his house. Wm. A. Selzer, a large dealer in bee- keepers' supplies, in Philadelphia, has many colonies on the roof of his place right in the heart of the business district, where it would seem impossible for bees to find a living. THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Very little space is required for bee- keeping; hives can be set two feet apart in rows, and the rows six to ten feet apart. No pasture need be provided for them. There are always fields of flowers to sup- ply the nectar. White clover produces a large yield of nectar of very fine flavor. The basswood or linden tree blossom produces a fine nec- tar which some consider better than white clover. Buclcwheat also gives a good yield of nectar, but it is dark in color and brings a lower price for that reason. There are other plants which yield large quantities of nectar, and it would be necessary to know the locality to say what would be the best plants ; but as white clover is found almost everywhere in the northern states, it is safe to say this will be the best producer in the spring, and goldenrod, where found, the best for the fall supply. Frank Benton, in United States Depart- ment of Agriculture Bulletin 59, says: S14 OTHER USES OF LAND "It may be safely said that any place where farming, gardening, or fruit raising can be successfully followed is adapted to the profitable keeping of bees." There is always a farmer here and there who keeps a few hives of bees. These often can be purchased at a very reason- able price, but unless they are Italian bees and are in improved hives, it would be better to purchase from some dealer. He may sell you a very weak colony, but after the first year these ought to be as strong as any. Start in the spring; when you have your bees, read good literature on the sub- ject. A. I. Root's "A B C of Bee Cul- ture" is good for beginners; subscribe for the American Bee Journal, of Chicago, or Gleanings in Bee Culture, Medina, Ohio. They are fuU of the latest ideas on the subject. A yield of fifty pounds of honey in a season can be obtained from one hive of bees in almost any locality. In fact, this S15 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY is often done where bees are kept in built up cities. One hundred pounds would be considered a very small yield by many apiarists, and twice this amount is often gathered in favored localities where up-to- date methods are followed. One man can take care of two hundred hives or colonies, as they are termed, if he is working for comb honey, and perhaps twice that number if for extracted honey. Comb honey is stored usually in one- pound boxes set in a super or small box over the main hive body, which is itself a box about seventeen inches long, eleven inches wide and ten inches deep into which frames of comb are slid side by side. These combs are accessible and can be lifted out, exposing to view the inner workings of the hive. It is in these combs that the queen lays as many as three thousand eggs some days, and in which the young bees are hatched. They are also used for storing honey for wiater use. 216 OTHER USES OF LAND The extractor has been invented to remove this honey without damaging the comb. The economy of this can readily be seen, as ten pounds of honey can be stored while one pound of comb is being buUt. This leaves the bees free to gather honey instead of using a portion of their force to build comb, as is necessary when comb honey is desired. The extractor is a round tin can on a central pivot with a revolving mechanism. Into this the fuU combs of honey are placed and are whirled around, throwing the honey out into the can by centrifugal force. It is then run out at the bottom into bottles or barrels, and the empty combs are replaced in the hive for the bees to fill again. Twice as many pounds of honey can be produced by this method; but the price of extracted honey is much less than that of comb honey. Adulteration of extracted honey with glucose is becoming so pre- 217 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY valent that it threatens to ruin this branch of the industry. But there wUl always be a good market for honey sold direct by the producer to residents, or even through storekeepers, in medium size towns, where customers can be sure that the honey is pure. The average wholesale prices of honey are about ten cents a pound for extracted and sixteen cents for fancy comb, so if the apiarist with two hundred hives pro- duces the small average of fifty pounds of comb honey and seUs it at fifteen cents a pound, he will receive $1,500 for his sea- son's work. If he goes in for extracted honey and produces one hundred pounds per hive, he will receive even more. Of course, expenses wiU have to come out of this. That this has been done over and over' again is proven by men who started in with , only a few hives and have accumulated considerable property from the business. 318 OTHER USES OF LAND But no one need expect to do this unless he is willing to give the bees the attention which they wiU require. To neglect them once means often a total loss. Most of the work will have to be done during the swarming season in May, June, and July. There has been so much written on the sub- ject and so many inventions and improve- ments made in the hives that bee-keeping more than any other branch of similar employment has been reduced to a science, and any one can thoroughly master it in two or three years. It is because its pos- sibilities are not generally recognized that so few are now engaged in it. The fear of stings will always deter many from entering this business and so check competition from forcing prices down. The price of honey makes it a luxury, and there wiU be an unlimited opportunity in the crop as long as the price does not get near the cost of producing, which is far below the present prices. 219 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 204, says: "In the United States the term 'mushroom' refers commercially to but a single species {Agaricus Campes- tris) of the fleshly fungi, a plant common throughout most of the temperate regions of the world, and one everywhere recog- nized as edible." It is unfortunate that the commercial use of the term "mushroom" restricts it to a single species. There are about twenty- five common varieties of edible fungi in the Northern states. The successful cultivation of mushrooms in America has not been so general as in most European countries. It is in France and in England that the mushroom industry has been best developed. France is the home of the industry.^ Unusual interest has been 'A glance at the figures will afford a fair idea of the growth of this industry in France. Quantity of mushrooms passing through the Central Market of Paris increased from 3,960,000 lbs. in 1898 to 9,680,000 lbs. in 1901. g£0 OTHER USES OF LAND shown in the United States in the growth of mushrooms within the past few years, and it is to be hoped and expected that within the next ten years the industry will develop to the fullest limit of the market demands. The latter wiYL, of course, be stimulated by the increasing popular appreciation of this product. In some cities and towns there is already a good market demand for mushrooms, whUe in others they may be sold directly to special customers. This should be borne in mind by prospective growers. While many American growers have been successful, a much larger number have failed. In most cases their failures have been due to one or more of the fol- lowing causes: (1) The use of poor spawn, or of spawn which has been killed by improper storage. (2) Spawning at a temperature inju- riously high. (3) The use of too much water either at the time of spawning or later. 221 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY (4) Unfavorable temperature during the igrowing period. It is therefore important to the prospective grower that careful at- tention be given to the general discussion of conditions which follow. Mushrooms may be grown in any place where the conditions of temperature and moisture are favorable. A shed, cellar, cave, or vacant space in a greenhouse may be utilized to advantage for this purpose. The most essential factor, perhaps, is that of temperatiu-e. The proper temperature ranges from 53° to 60° F., with the best from 55° to 58° F. It is unsafe to at- tempt to grow mushrooms on a commercial basis, according to our present knowledge of the subject, in a temperature much less than 50° or greater than 63° F. Any severe changes of temperature would en- tirely destroy the profits of the mushroom crop. From this it is evident that in many places mushrooms may not be grown as a summer crop. With artificial heat they £23 OTHER USES OF LAND may be grown almost anywhere throughout the winter. Moreover, it is very probable that in this country open-air culture must be limited to a few sections. A second important factor is that of moisture. The place should not be very damp, or constantly dripping with water. Under such conditions successful commer- cial work is not possible. A place where it is possible to maintain a fairly moist condi- tion of the atmosphere, and having such capability for ventilation as wUl cause at least a gradual evaporation, is necessary. With too rapid ventilation and the consequent necessity of repeated applications of water to the mushroom bed, no mushroom crop wiU attain the highest perfection. Even a little iron rust in the soil is re- ported as fatal to the Campestris, the only fungus so far successfully propagated. If other fungi than the Campestris come up wild, don't throw them away as worth- less. Many are better eating than the one 828 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY you seek, and you can avoid the risk of poisonous ones by learning to recognize the dangerous family — send for the Agricultural Department's Bulletin No. 204. Mean- while, (1) aU mushrooms with pink gUls, (2) aU coral-like fungi, (3) all that grow on wood, and (4) all puff balls, are good to eat if they are young and tender — only don't mistake an unspread Aminita for a puff ball. An ingenious person may find other sources of income in the country. A young hotel porter in Ulster County, New York, recently bought seventy acres of mountain woodland four miles from the raUroad for two hundred and fifty dollars, and puts in his winters cutting barrel hoops, at which he makes two dollars a day. Meanwhile the land is maturing timber. That is hard work, but to gather wild mushrooms or to cut willows, or sweet pine needles to make cushions, or to catch young squirrels for sale, is lighter, if less steady employment. OTHER USES OF LAND And with all our uses of land, we must not forget a little corner for the hammock and the croquet hoops for the wife and the children. In the Province of Quebec, where the land is held in great tracts un- der the Seignors, I have seen croquet grounds no bigger than a bed quilt in front of the little one-room cottages. The Frenchman knows the importance of such things as that, has meals out of doors: in fine weather, goes on little picnics and keeps madame contented in the country. A swing, or a see-saw, and a tether ball (a ball swinging from the top of a pole eight feet high) for the children, will help to keep the family peace. 2£5 CHAPTER XIII FRUITS FRUIT raising can succeed in either of two ways. Either planting the or- chard in some one fruit and specializing thereon, or diversifying the operation to cover many varieties. In the first way it is usual to estabhsh orchards in favorable locahties without special regard to nearness to market; because in these days of re- frigerator car lines the product of an or- chard in any part of the country can be sent to market quick enough to avoid loss. Where many varieties are grown, the best site is usually near a large city where the grower can market his own product on wagons and get the benefit of retail prices. Remember that it is far more profitable to raise twenty baskets of fine, well-shaped, 2Z6 FRUITS clean, handsome apples or peaches or any other hand-eaten fruit, than to raise a hun- dred barrels of stuff that is good only for the common drier or for the null or hog- pen. Care and common sense are the jack- screws to use in raising fine fruit. The apple is the great American fruit for extensive orcharding. The question is whether there is a profit in apple growing. The answer is, where the conditions are favorable and when the business is well conducted there is. Under average condi- tions, with poor business management, there is httle or none. As Professor S. T. Maynard in Sub- urban Life for March, 1906, tells us, "In a suburban garden of one of our Eastern cities are seven Astrachan trees, about twenty years old, from which have been sold in a single season over one hundred dollars' worth of fruit. A friend near Boston put three thousand barrels of picked 227 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Baldwins into cold storage. None of the fancy apples sold for less than three dol- lars a barrel, and the others netted more than two dollars. They were the product of less than forty acres of trees which had been planted about twenty-five years. Another fruit grower showed me several returns of commission men of five, six and even seven dollars a barrel for fancy Bald- wins. At such prices, and under such con- ditions, there is a large profit in apple growing." "The other side of the picture, however, is the more common one. A friend sent fifty barrels of fancy Baldwins to a com- mission house, to be shipped to European markets, the returns for which were just enough to pay for the barrels. The ma- jority of apples grown in the United States are sold to buyers, one buyer in each section, for a doUar to a dollar and a half for No. 1 quality, and seventy-five cents to a doUar for No. 2. With the cost £S8 FRXHTS of barrels at twenty-five to forty cents, labor for picking, sorting and packing, these prices leave little or nothing for the use of the land, cost of fertilizers, spray- ing, thinning, etc., all of which are neces- sary for growing fruit of the best quality." Holmes further says, in substance, that we must make the trees grow vigorously, whether upon poor or good soil. Growth is the first requirement. To do this, we need a strong, deep, moist soil, — good grass land well underdrained makes the best. If this is on an elevation with a northern or western exposure, it will be better than a southern or an eastern one. While apple trees will grow on a thin soil, so much care and fertilizing is required that the crop wUl be of little or no profit upon such land. Lastly, we must protect our fruit from insect and fungous pests. On land that is free from stones and not too steep, thorough and frequent culti- vation will give the quickest and largest THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY returns. On such land hoed garden or farm crops may be profitable while the trees are small, but after five or six years it will generally be found best to cultivate it entirely for the growth of trees. Or- ganic matter in the form of stable manure or cover-crops, wUl be needed and must be applied in the fall or very early in the spring to keep up the supply of humus in the soil. Stony land that cannot be plowed or cultivated except at a great cost may be made to grow good crops of fruit. While the trees are young, the soil should be worked about them for the space of a few feet and then the moisture retained by a mulch system, making use of any waste organic matter hke straw, leaves, meadow hay, brush, and weeds. Most of the first prize apples at the Pan-American Ex- position at Buffalo were grown under the "turf-culture" system. Unless you have trees already on your 2S0 FRUITS land, it is too long to wait six or seven years for a crop. We can graft good fruit on almost any tree, and if we have trees we need not even wait for the har- vest for our crop, since the windfalls wiU keep us in apple sauce, jellies, and pies, for no apple is too green for apple sauce, not even the ones that the boys can't bite. The greatest difficulty in the profitable growth of the apple is the market. Much of the profit in apple growing, whether in the East or the West, will depend upon the extent of the business done, especially if one is a considerable distance from mar- kets. The above are the essentials noted by this practical scientist. Next to the apple crop, perhaps the most important fruit Crop for shipping is the peach. The locahty is perhaps the most important consideration in a peach orchard. In the Eastern and Southern states, and in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and, of 281 THREE ACRES AKD LIBERTY late years, Georgia, peaches flourish and produce enormous crops. As a general rule, the nearer the orchard is to large hodies of water, the more likely one is to get a crop, as the temperature of the water prevents a too early budding out in the spring and delays killing autumn frosts. Generally speaking, a sandy, porous soil is best for peaches, but they may be raised on clay lands if provided with plenty of humus. Another fruit which is profitable in dis- tricts suited to its growth is the grape. Bulletin No 153, Cornell Experiment Sta- tion, says: "Grapes are a dessert fruit. They are not used to a large extent in the kitchen, and there are few incidental or secondary products; that is, they are not dried, canned, made into jellies, and the like, to any extent, that is in the United States." The grape is peculiarly a sectional pro- duct. Central New York has a large area FRUITS devoted to it. In northern Ohio, a strip along Lake Erie, and some of its islands, are devoted almost exclusively to grape vineyards. In districts where grapes are intensively grown, a great part of the crop is used for wine, and American wine is extensively sold in our home markets, although it frequently has foreign lahels. Anyone purchasing a farm should plant some grape-vines for home use. Grape juice is easily made and kept and is a pleasing beverage. Grape jelly is excellent and could be readily marketed in any nearby town, since there is very httle, comparatively, on sale. A grape arbor gives shade, needs little care, and can be planted near the house where it wiU not interfere with the crops. For you cannot cultivate aU of your land, some grassy space must be left around the house if only for drying clothes. But if ground is scarce, vines or hma beans can be trained up the back porch or up the sunny side of the house; or a THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY few climbing nasturtiums will give decora- tion without care, while the leaves make a good salad. Of home orchard fruits, the plum, pear, and quince are all profitable specialties, especially for intensive acre raising. In general, the same remark may be made of them as of the other fruits, that they need careful selection of land to get the best results. The cherry has recently come to be recognized as a good commercial spe- cialty. Mr. George T. Powell, in The 'American Agriculturist of February 24th, 1906, says: "The crop is a precarious one to market The risk and loss may be largely reduced by making a proper selec- tion of site for the orchard. This should be on high ground where the air generally circulates freely. This is especially neces- sary for sweet varieties. The soil should be rich, with naturally good drainage." He says: "I have had Rockpoxt trees produce four hundred pounds each and the FRUITS fruit net ten cents a pound for the entire crop. The English Morello trees may be grown fifteen feet apart each way, which will allow two hundred trees to the acre. The larger trees ought to be planted some- what thinner Cherries are packed largely in eight-pound baskets and in strawberry quarts. Each basket is filled with carefully assorted fruit, every imperfect specimen being taken out, after which they are faced by placing the stems downward i so that the cherry shows in regular rows upon the face. Girls and women do this work. The Eastern fruit grower must bear in mind that he has to meet in his market the competition of the Pacific coast grow- ers, who excel in fine packing; and al- though our Eastern grown cherries are of a finer flavor, they are sent to the market in such a crude manner and in such unat- tractive condition that they seU for much less than the California fruit." The second year after planting bush THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY berries, he says, you will get a small crop and for the third and subsequent years a full crop. The important thing is to keep the dead canes well pruned out, as the cane borer is one of the worst insect pests. When they appear they can be stopped by cutting off the shoot several inches below the puncture as soon as it be- gins to droop, and burning the part cut off. Again, Mr. Powell says in The American Agriculturist for April 28th, 1906, "Cur- rants require rich soil. A clay or heavy loam is better than a heavy dry soil. They should be planted in the fall. The average from ten thousand bushes should be about four quarts each. The cherry currant is per- haps the largest in size, but not so prolific as some others. Currants are shipped and sold in thirty-two quart crates and have to be carefully packed to get to market in good condition." Gooseberries are raised by the acre. Mr. A. M. Brown, Kent County, Dela- SS6 FRUITS ware, in The 'American Agriculturist for July 7th, 1906, tells of a plantation in Central Delaware where last season over twenty-four thousand pounds were gathered from a scant four acres. The product was sold to the Baltimore canners for six cents a pound, making $1,440 in all. In addi- tion to the gooseberries grown on six acres, a large crop each of apples and pears were grown on the same ground. Like currants, the gooseberry must be sprayed to destroy the worms and cut back and burnt to de- stroy the cane borer. There is little special knowledge re- quired, however, in raising this fruit, and it is well adapted for growers with small acreage and little money. In going into the cultivation of bush fruits, it is usually best to grow them in great variety near the market where they are to be sold. The bush fruits are then uni- formly profitable. In Suburban Life for May, 1906, Mr. E. C. Powell tells us that «37 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY the spring is the best time for planting raspberries and blackberries, just as soon as the ground is dry enough to work. The first season the plots should be well tiUed. It is possible to grow vegetables between the rows the first year before the berries begin to bear, but unless pressed for space, it probably doesn't pay. Perhaps the best known of small fruits, however, and most largely used is the strawberry. The strawberry can be planted by the acre. The ground must be rich loam and plenty of humus, well drained, with a southern exposure. Well-grown plants set out in the open will bear a small crop the first season but wUl not become of maximum bearing tiU the second year. After the crop is taken off in the fall a mulch of straw or leaves should be placed over the plants to protect them during the winter. The strawberries are picked by boys and girls. The strawberry is an exceedingly profit- 2S8 FRUITS able crop if properly handled, and is one of the best small fruits for people with little capital to take hold of. While the price in the general market varies from fifteen to thirty cents per quart, they sometimes run as high as fifty in the early spring; yet it is possible to grow straw- berries worth six doUars a quart by in- tensive culture in greenhouses. Mr. S. W. Fletcher, in Country Life in America for November, 1905, says: "The forcing of strawberries is a specialized industry of the highest type. Everybody cannot make it pay everywhere Strawberries are forced in pots or in benches. The pot method is preferred by those who find a demand for the highest quality of fruit regardless of expense If fruit is desired for Christ- mas, the plants are not checked to any ex- tent, but are kept in continuous growth. The conditions of springtime are simu- lated as far as possible. At Christmas time a quart box of forced Marshall straw- ^39 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY berries sells at from one-fifty to eight dol- lars per quart, averaging about four dollars." Our most valuable allies against the in- sect armies are toads, bats, wasps, dragon flies, and birds; they enjoy the battle. There cannot be too many toads or bats. Toads will eat all sorts of flies, potato bugs, squash bugs, rose bugs, caterpillars, and almost anything that crawls. If the wasps become a nuisance, it is easy to poison them; but the birds are often a nuisance — the robins eat the straw- berries and cherries the instant they are ripe. They soon get used to scarecrows; and to cover the fruit with nets gives the insects a free hand. Some growers raise sweet cherries or other fruits spe- cially to feed up the birds so that they will let the rest alone. Early rising and a plenty of cats is about the best remedy. A man working on the land is the best scarecrow. S40 FRUITS There are a few other fruits that grow- wild in certain sections and are gathered and sent to market. Among these, the cranberry is the most important. It grows in nearly inaccessible bogs, principally in New Jersey, and the usual custom is for owners of land on which there are cran- berry bogs to let out the bog to pickers on a percentage basis. Cranberries can be cultivated, and there is a considerable profit in the business. The swampy nature of the ground needed, however, wiU deter all except the most persistent from this in- dustry. Some cranberry bogs bring as high as a thousand doUars an acre. The blueberry or huckleberry, or, as we caU them in Ireland, billberries, or frohens, grows wild in the northerly states, and is much sought after in the market. Many efforts have been made to grow the blue- berry commercially; but, as is well said by Mr. J. H. Hale in the Rural New Yorker for 1906, "The blueberry proved to be a 241 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY good deal like Indians — it would not stand civilization, and was never satisfactory, al- though I monkeyed with it for a period of about ten years." Mr. Fred W. Card, of Rhode Island, in the same issue reports a similar experience. With our present knowledge of the blueberry, it cannot be made a commercially cultivated crop. A new variety, however, called the Gar- den Blueberry, gives almost incredible yields, five bushels being reported from sixty plants. It keeps aU winter on the branches, if stored in a cellar, and is of fine flavor and especially good for pre- serves. A httle frost improves it. But wild berries, crab apples and elder- berries and others, are good to preserve and find a ready sale, if attractively put up; they also help out the table greatly. Then think of the fun! In recent years, certain varieties of nuts, like the English walnut, the pecan, and the hickory nuts have been grown commercially. £4^ FRUITS In the South particularly, the pecan has been found a good crop to plant on cotton plantations which have been overworked. In the Rural New Yorker for July 14th, 1906, Mr. H. E. Vandevan gives an ac- count of an old cotton plantation of 2,250 acres lying on the west bank of the Mis- sissippi River in Louisiana. The pecan tree was indigenous to the land, and the wooded portion of the plantation has thousands of giant pecan trees growing on it. The previous owners of this plantation had done all in their power to destroy these trees, but they flourished in spite of that. Mr. Vandevan, however, saw in the pecan a large profit, and he has planted ten thousand trees on six hundred acres, all in a sohd block. The trees are set fifty feet apart both ways, except where a road- way is left. Between the pecan trees Mr. Vandevan has planted fig trees for early returns, with the intention of canning the fruit. S43 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY The English wahiut is grown principally in Cahfornia. Its value has been recog- nized only recently, as all of the nut crops take a good many years before the trees begin to bear. Nut growing on a small scale is not of much value to a man with a little bit of land, except as an additional source of income. If you find a sweet chestnut tree or a shell-bark hickory or two in your wood lot, they will well repay protection and careful cultivation. If you don't, why — Burbank promises us great things in quick maturing nut trees. 244 CHAPTER XIV FLOWERS EVERY city in the United States affords an opportunity for flower gardening and nurseries, but a study must be made of the market in order to know what is best to raise and where to raise it. The choice of crops depends on the popu- lar taste. The flowers which are now in greatest demand are the rose, carnation, violet and chrysanthemum. Xear every large city there are hundreds of florists with glass houses, some covering as high as fourteen acres. There were 2,200 acres of flower land under glass re- ported at the last census. As almost all industries to-day are specialized, so is floriculture; in one place we see ten acres of glass given over to the rose, in another 24i& THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY thousands of dollars devoted to the carna- tion or the violet, while Mr. C. W. Ward, of Queens, Long Island, has 75,000 square feet of glass for carnations. The specialist who devotes his thoughts and energies to raising one flower, can produce better results than if he raised a variety. He has only one crop to market, and can do it more successfully than with a nvunber of crops. If he raises enough to make himself a factor in the market, he can sell direct instead of sending his prod- uct to a commission man, thereby receiving better prices. Little capital is required to start; intel- ligent effort is the road to success. Very few, indeed, who are now leaders in flori- culture, started with more than $500 capi- tal, and many with much less. One of the largest growers of roses in the United States, whose plant covers more than ten acres, did not have $500 when he started, and many others not so well known, are 246 FLOWERS making handsome livings and have accmnu- lated thousands of dollars of property from a start of less than $500. But practical knowledge is much more necessary than in raising vegetables, as small mistakes wiU have more serious re- sults. Therefore, if you have some capital and wish to go into flower-raising, it wiU pay you, if circumstances permit, to hire out to a florist, even at small wages, tiU you have learned the business — even though you have raised flowers successfully in a home garden. Mr. Frank Hamilton, manager of C. W. Ward's, teUs of at least a dozen men, who have been in their employ during his twenty-five years' experience, sorde of whom got only twenty dollars a month at first, and afterwards started in a small way for themselves, who are now making a sub- stantial hving. Although the market depends largely on the wealthy class in the large cities, many 247 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY florists devote considerable time and space to flowers which are bought by the poorer class of city dwellers who have no space or time to raise their own.^ There are always good markets some- where for the crop, and it is not an un- common thing to ship flowers from New York to Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, Phila- delphia, Baltimore, and Washington, or vice versa. The chances of success for a lover of flowers are better in this business than in any in which a man with a like amount of capital can engage. If the business at first is not large enough to use all his time, he will find no trouble in se- curing employment in his immediate vicin- ity. There are always some who want such a man to care for their lawns or to give some of his time to their conservatories. In the last ten years the business has doubled, and while many have gone into it, the profit they are making indicates that * For timef of planting out-door flowers see Appendix G. £48 FLOWERS supply has not kept pace with demand, and that it is not likely to be overdone in the near future. Professor B. T. Galloway, in an article in The World's Work says, "An acre of soil under glass pays fifty times as much as an acre outdoors. There are now an- nually sold in this country six to seven million dollars' worth of carnation flowers. There are no less than eight to ten million square feet of glass in the United States devoted to this flower alone." Although Mr. Rockefeller's place at Tarrytown is the largest competitor in the New York market for violets, there is no natural monopoly in that, and the local producer with personal attention can do well. In the Country Gentleman for June 28th, 1906, an account is given of a violet farm on the north shore of Illinois, where two women, Mrs. George McReynolds and Miss Nina F. Howard, of Glencoe, are THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY now supplying local florists. Miss Howard says: "We started our farm last spring in the face of most discouraging prophe- cies from our friends and the keenest com- petition of violet growers of New York. But we believed we could be successful. We had studied the best scientific methods of growing the plants, had imported the best soil obtainable and built a greenhouse fuUy adapted to our needs, so we just went ahead and we found it to be a paying proposition. "Our first experiment was in using cut- tings from the violet farm of Miss Chit- tenden at Lansing, Michigan, who has been a most successful grower. These did not thrive, and we next imported 3,000 cuttings from the Tarrytown neigh- borhood, where violet culture has been most successful. "The first rule is to keep the tempera- ture of the greenhouse between forty-five and fifty degrees. Violets are spring S50 FLOWERS flowers, and wither and droop if the tem- perature is not at the right degree. Most people think the douhle violets have no fragance because most of those that we get lose their fragrance in transit. "We supply 2,000 flowers a week, and as they reach our patrons within two or three hours at the most from the time of cutting, they retain their fragrance. They are also larger and of a deeper color than the New York flowers. Next year we hope to go in on a much larger scale. "While the work is not hard, it requires infinite care and vigilance while the little plants are growing. As a career for a woman, violet growing ofi^ers greater in- ducements than anything I can think of." Then, surely, others can succeed in other flowers at other places. While there is little choice between the standard styles of greenhouses for violets, there should be abundant provision for supplying fresh air, either from the sides or top, whichever 251 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY is chosen. The system of ventilation should admit of operation either from the ioside or the outside of the house, as fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas is sometimes necessary, in the fxmies of which it is im- possible to enter. The arrangement of the house should secure the greatest possible supply of sun- shine in December and January, and the least possible during the growing season, w^hen, as Miss Howard points out, it is necessary to secure as low a temperature as possible, so as to obtain good, vigorous, healthy-growing plants. The best site is a level piece of ground, or one sloping gently to the south. Of the diseases to which cultivated violets are subject, Mr. P. H. Dorsett, of the De- partment of Agriculture, names four as es- pecially dangerous: Spot disease, producing whitish spots on the foliage; root rot, apt to attack yoimg plants transplanted in hot, dry weather; wet rot, a fungus apt to appear 252 FLOWERS in too moist air or where ventilation is in- sufficient; and yellowing, of the cause of which little is known. Any of these dis- eases is difficult to exterminate when it once gains a foothold. The best thing to do is to get strong, vigorous cuttings, and then to give careful attention to watering, cultivation, and ventilation, and the de- struction of dead and dying leaves and all runners as fast as they appear. Among insect enemies, the aphids, red spiders, eel worms, gaU flies, and slugs may be mentioned. Most of these can be easiest controlled by hydrocyanic acid gas treatment. Chrysanthemums, especially of preter- natural size and bizarre colors, the college colors at football games, for instance, are in great demand. They are extremely deco- rative, and their remarkable lasting quality insures their permanent popularity. I have heard that the unexpanded bud can be cooked like cauliflower for the table; but 263 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY we have not learned to use them in that way. In Japan and China the leaves of the chrysanthemum are esteemed as a salad. One attempt has been made by English gardeners to introduce this use of Ithem into England, but it was unsuccessful. The annual shows of chrysanthemums and of roses indicate the importance of the business. It is not generally known, but the poppies are coming into favor for cut flowers in spite of the fact that they do not keep very well. Miss Edith Granger avoids this diflBculty, as she explains in the Garden Magazine for April, 1906: "By picking off aU blooms that have not already lost their petals in the evening, so that in the morning all the open flowers wUl be new ones. These are cut as early as possible, even while the dew is still upon them, and plunged immediately into deep water." You need not be discouraged by the low prices at which flowers, especially violets ^54 FLOWERS and roses, are often offered in the streets. Those flowers are the discarded stock or delayed shipments of the swell florists. You will find that those flowers are fading, or revived with salt, and will not keep. That they are so peddled shows that everybody, at hotels, dinners, funerals, wed- dings, in the home, and the young men for the young women, want flowers, the love- liest things ever made without souls. We have only to supply such a want to find our place in life. Fleischman, of Fifth Avenue, quotes cut flowers, not cut prices, in the New York winter market: Violets, $1.00 per hundred; Carnations, Killarney Roses, Brides and Maids, Rich- monds, $1.00 per dozen; American Beauty Roses, $1.50 to $5.00 per dozen; Valley Lflies, $1.25 per bunch of 25; Chrysan- themums, choicest, $2.00 to $5.00 per dozen. These prices continue indefinitely. The winter wholesale figures are: S55 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY ^^oIet5 $ .35 to $1.00 per bundled Carnations, common 1.00 " 1.50 " " « sdects 1.50 " 2.00 " " " fancies 2.00 " 5.00 " « KiUamey Roses 1.00 " 6.00 « « Brides and Bridesmaids, Special... 3.00 " 4.00 " " " " « Extra .. 2.00 " 3.00 « " " " " " No. 1 .. 1.00 " 1.50 " « " " " « No. 2 .. .25 " .75 « " Richmond 1.00 « 6.00 " » Beauties, Specials 15.00 " 20.00 " " " Fancy 10.00 " 12.00 " " " Extra 8.00 " 10.00 " « No. 1 4.00 " 6.00 " " " No. 2 3.00 " 3.00 « « Lily of the Valley 1.00 " 3.00 " Chrysanthemums, Ordinary 2.00 " 6.00 " " " Fancy 8.00 " 20.00 " " As a side line the common flowers will bring good prices; mignonette, bachelor buttons, cosmos, and even nasturtimns, which you can't keep from growing if you just stick the seed in the ground, or lilies of the valley, which you can hardly get rid of once they start, never go begging, if they are fresh. A favorite flower with many is the S56 FLOWERS sweet pea, which can be grown out of doors in the summer time where you have a good depth and quaUty of soil. I have seen May blossoms and autumn leaves on the branch and even goldenrod brought into town and sold at good prices. Enterprises often look attractive at a distance; for instance, raising orchids, es- pecially as some of the flowers remain on the plants ready for market for weeks and bring high prices. But to ship flowers at a profit they must be in quantities, else the expenses eat up the returns, and they must be shipped with considerable regularity, else you lose your customers. To get such a supply of orchids would take a very large capital and involve so much labor that it is doubtful if more than good interest coxild be realized on it. Many florists make money by keeping constantly on hand ferns, pahns and other plants like rubber trees, which they rent out for social functions, weddings, and other 257 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY occasions. Most florists in the larger cities have also quite a thriving business in tree planting, which is everjnvhere on the in- crease. A highly specialized department of horticulture is that of raising young trees and plants to sell for improving grounds, planting orchards, or similar uses. The nursery business bears much the same relation to the commercial florist or or- chardist as seed growing does to the market gardener. Certain commimities, through favorable soil or climate, are best adapted to the pro- duction of nursery stock. Consequently, one finds this industry most highly de- veloped in scattered locahties. It is per- haps true that people with small capital should not tackle a business so technical as this. The business of bulb production is an- other highly specialized department. In certain sections of Holland large areas of the rich lowlands are given over to bulbs of £58 FLOWERS various kinds of lilies, nearly all of which are propagated in that manner. To attain per- fection, at least in the north, bulbs require deep, rich, warm and highly manured soils; and most assiduous attention at every stage. In many plant specialties, the gar- deners of Europe still far surpass our own, because conditions there have forced them to make use of every available means to increase production. The immense prices that European gardeners have to pay for land has been a most potent factor in forcing them to seek out and apply the most ingenious forcing methods. The time is upon us here in America also when we must find out the highest use of land and apply it to that use. As the aesthetic quahties of our people become more highly developed, the business of raising flowers must become of increas- ing importance, and will readily reward anyone who goes into it conscientiously. Flower growing is peculiarly adapted to 259 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY women, since the work is light. There are few disagreeable features, unless it be the handling of the manure incidental to the best results. Still, the enjoyments of agriculture de- pend upon individual tastes. I have seen "lady gardeners" picking strawberries with the footman holding up an umbrella to screen them from the sun. Some women would like that, some not. 360 CHAPTER XV DRUG PLANTS A SOURCE of profit from land to which little attention has been given in the United States is that of coUecting or raising plants, some part of which may be used for medicinal purposes. We con- dense from Miss Alice Henkel, in Farm- ers' Bulletin 'No. 188, United States De- partment of Agriculture: Certain weU-knowTi weeds are sources of cnide drugs at present obtained wholly or in part from abroad. Roots, leaves, and flowers of several of the species most detrimental in the United States are gath- ered, cured, and used in Europe, and sup- ply much of the demands of foreign lands. Some of these plants are in many states subject to anti-weed laws and farmers are 261 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY required to take measures toward their extermination. The prices paid for crude drugs from these sources are not great and would rarely tempt anyone to this work as a business. Yet if in ridding the farm of weeds and thus raising the value of the land the farmer can at the same time make these pests the source of a smaU income instead of a dead loss, something is gained. One rather alluring fact contained in ah article by Dr. True, is that a shortage has become keenly felt in "Golden Seal," which the early American settlers learned from the Indians to use as a curative for sore and inflamed eyes, as well as for sore mouth. The plant grows in patches in high open woods, and was formerly found in great abundance in Ohio, Indiana, Ken- tucky, and West Virginia, but is now so rare that its price has risen from thirty- five cents wholesale in 1898 to over seventy- five cents a pound. Persons in different U2 DRUG PLANTS parts of the country have undertaken the production of Golden Seal on a conunercial scale. More than six hundred dollars' worth can be grown on an acre: so a crop this year would be a fortune. The methods of raising it can be ascertained upon ap- phcation to the Department of Agriculture. Ginseng is one of the drug crops which paid handsome returns a few years ago, perhaps because it takes from five to seven years to grow from seeds; but so many went into that hne that few men to-day make anything at it. Furthermore, the Chinese, who use a large part of it, vfoLl buy only the wild roots — and they know the diiference. Those who control the trade have burned quantities in the effort to keep up the price. There are some drug plants which might be raised with success by those who would specialize in one plant, but the lesson we learn from ginseng should act as a warning. Raising drugs is one of those things that THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY seems to be more profitable to teach others to do than to do yourself. A weU-known Professor said to me: "If I were twenty- five and knew what I know about drugs and the market for them, I should go into the drug-raising business. But I should expect to lose money for some years. Ifl I were a small clerk, say, or an old man who wanted to get out of city life, and I had $500 I really wanted to venture in dioig raising, I should divide it in half — half I should put " in the bank and the other half I should throw into the Hudson River. Then I should be sure of $250 instead of being drawn on to spend it all." "Most of the people who have been in the business, notably the Shakers, who used to do the most of it, are gradually getting out of it. The few men who make money raising drugs keep it to themselves." Dr. Rodney True, of the United States Agricultural Department, knows more about growing drugs than anyone else. DRUG PLANTS In many cases when weeds have been dug the work of handling and curing them is not excessive and can readily be done by Avomen and children. Too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the importance of carefully and thoroughly drying aU crude drugs, whether roots, herbs, leaves, barks, flowers, or seeds, and putting them under cover at nightfall. If poorly dried, they will heat and become moldy in shipping, and the collector will find his goods rejected by the dealer and have all his trouble for nothing. Leaves, herbs, and flowers should never be washed. It is important also to collect in proper season only, as drugs collected out of sea- son are unmarketable on account of infe- rior medicinal qualities, and there will also be a greater shrinkage in a root dug dur- ing the growing season than when it is collected after growth has ceased. The roots of annual plants should be dug 265 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY in the autumn of the first year just before the flowering period, and those of biennial and perennial plants in the fall of the sec- ond or third year, after the tops have dried. After the roots have been dug the soil should be well shaken from them, and all foreign particles such as dirt, roots, and parts of other plants, should be removed. If the roots cannot be sufficiently cleared of soil by shaking, they should be thoroughly washed in clean water. Drugs must be wholesome-looking at least. It does not pay to be careless in this matter. The soil increases the weight of the roots, but the purchaser is not willing to pay for the weight of dirt, and grades the uncleaned or mixed drugs accordingly. It is the bright, natural looking root, leaf or plant, that win bring a good price. After washing, the roots should be care- fully dried by exposing them to light and air, on racks or shelves, or on clean, weU- 266 DRUG PLANTS ventilated barn floors or lofts. They should be spread out thinly and turned occasion- ally from day to day until completely cured. "WHien this point is reached, in per- haps three to six weeks, the roots will snap readily when bent. If dried out of doors they should be placed under shelter at night and upon the approach of rain. Some roots require sHcing and removing fibrous rootlets. In general, large roots should be split or sliced when green in order to facilitate drying. Barks of trees should be gathered in spring, when the sap begins to flow, but may also be peeled in winter. In the case of the coarser barks (as ehn, hemlock, poplar, oak, pine, and wild cherry) the outer layer is shaved ofi^ before the bark is removed from the tree, which process is known as "rossing." Only the inner bark of these trees is used medicinally. Barks may also be cured by exposure to sun- hght, but moisture must be avoided. 267 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Ijcaves and herbs should be collected when the plants are in fuU flower. The whole plant may be cut and the leaves may be stripped from it, rejecting the coarse and large stems as much as possible, and keeping only the flowering tops and more tender stems and leaves. Both leaves and herbs should be spread out in thin layers on clean floors, racks, or shelves, in the shade, but where there is free circulation of air, and turned fre- quently until thoroughly dry. Moisture will darken them. Flowers are collected when they first open or immediately after, not when they are beginning to fade. Seeds should be gathered just as they are ripening, before the seed pods open, and should be win- nowed in order to remove fragments of stems, leaves, and shriveled specimens. The collector should be sure that the plant is the right one. Many plants closely resemble one another, and some "yarbs," £68 DRUG PLANTS contrary to the popular impression, are deadly poison — nightshade (belladonna) and the wild variety of parsnips, for instance. Therefore, where any doubt exists, send a specimen of the entire plant, including leaves, flowers, and fruits, to a drug dealer or to the nearest state experiment station for identification. Samples representative of the lot of drugs to be sold should be sent to the nearest commission merchant, or drug store, for inspection and for quotation on the amount of drug that can be furnished, or for information as to where to send the article. In writing to the diff'erent dealers for information and prices, it should be stated how much of a particular drug can be fur- nished and how soon this can be supplied, and postage should always be enclosed for reply. The collector should bear in mind that freight is an important item, and it is best, therefore, to address the dealers 360 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY accessible to the place of production. The package containing the sample should be plainly marked with contents and the name and address of the sender. When ready for shipment crude drugs may be tightly packed in burlap or gunny sacks, or in dry, clean barrels. Burdock root brings from three to eight cents per pound, and seed five to ten cents. About fifty thousand pounds of the root is imported annually, and the best comes from Belgium. Of dock roots, about 125,000 pounds are imported annually, at from two to eight cents. The field for the sale of dandelion root may be judged from the fact that, in the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1903, our im- ports amounted to more than 115,000 pounds at a price of from four to six cents per pound. Of couch grass, the roots of which cause much profanity in this country, there are 270 DRUG PLANTS some 250,000 pounds annually imported, at from three to seven cents per pound. A common weed with which there is considerable trouble is the pokeweed, the root of which brings from two to five cents per pound and the dried berries five cents per pound. Forty to sixty thousand pounds of fox- glove is imported from Europe. Analysis has shown that the leaves of the wild American foxglove are as good as the European article, the price of which per pound ranges from six to eight cents. Of mullein flowers about five thousand pounds are imported, chiefly from Ger- many. The leaves are also imported at from two and one-half to five cents per pound, while the flowers bring from twenty- five to seventy-five cents per pound. Dried leaves and tops of lobeha bring from three to eight cents per pound, while the seed commands fifteen to twenty cents per poimd. 271 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Of tansy about thirty-five thousand pounds are imported annually at a price ranging from three to six cents. The flowering tops and leaves of the gum plant are used as a drug. They bring from five to twelve cents per pound. Boneset leaves and tops bring from two to eight cents per pound. Catnip tops and leaves two to eight cents per pound. Of hoarhound about 125,000 pounds are imported annually, prices being three to eight cents per pound. Blessed thistle is cultivated in Germany, and it is imported to a limited extent. Price per pound ranges from eight to ten cents. Yarrow is a weed common from the New England states to Missouri. It is imported in small quantities, and brings from two to five cents per pound. Canada fleabane brings from six to eight cents per pound. Of jimsonweed, leaves are imported, from 272 DRUG PLANTS 100,000 to 150,000 pounds annually, and 10,000 pounds of seed. Leaves bring two and one-half to eight cents per pound, and seeds from three to seven cents per pound. Of poison hemlock, seeds are imported from ten to twenty thousand pounds annually. Price for the seed is three cents per pound, for the leaves about four cents. The flowers are also used. The American wormseed has been natu- ralized from tropical America to New England; the seed commands from six to eight cents per pound; the oil distilled from this seed brings one dollar and a half per pound. Black mustard, which is a troublesome weed in almost every state in the Union, is nevertheless imported in enormous quan- tities, the total imports of the seeds of the black and white mustard amounting in 1903 to over five million pounds, the prices being from three to six cents per pound. In studying the wild drug plants, one THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY may learn the immense variety of field salads and greens. On a visit to the Spirit Fruit Society of Ingleside, Illinois, one of the girls took me out to gather wild vegetables for dinner. We pulled up about a dozen varieties out of the corners of a field; two or three of the nice looking ones that I gathered the young lady threw out, saying she did not know them; but it seemed to me that she took almost any- thing that was not too tough. The fol- lowing are commonly used as salads: Dandelion, yeUow rocket, purslane (pusley), watercress, nasturtium; and the following as greens for cooking: narrow or sour dock, stinging nettle, poke weed, pig weed or lamb's quarters, black mustard. Young mUkweed is better than spinach, and also makes an excellent salad. Probably all the salad leaves could be cooked to advantage. Rhubarb leaves and horseradish tops are garden greens usually neglected most un- fairly. 274 DRUG PLANTS Osage Orange {maclura aurantiaca ) is generally supposed to be poison, and is described in Webster's dictionary as "a hard and inedible fruit," but I have found one kind, at least, superior to quinces. Capsicum or red pepper, licorice (the im- ports of which have all been in the hands of one person), camphor, belladonna, hen- bane, and stramonium are possible fields for culture; but they are all experiments. If you are growing poppies for the flowers it might be worth while to gather some opium, especially if the new process succeeds in separating morphine directly from the plant. Caraway seeds, anise, coreander, and sage are common garden plants that may be sold as drugs. 276 CHAPTER XVI NOVEL LIVE STOCK OCCASIONALLY we hear stories of the wealth which is being made on a frog farm here or there. But as a rule little commercial success has attended at- tempts in this direction. The difficulty lies in feeding them. A single frog can be fed by dangling a piece of meat before it, but it would be impos- sible to feed thousands this way. There are so many enemies that few tadpoles become adult frogs; besides, the frog is a cannibal and will eat not only the larva or eggs, but the tadpoles and young frogs as weU. Frog culture is successful in some places where ponds are large enough to be par- titioned, separating the tadpoles and yoimg 276 NOVEL LIVE STOCK frogs from the old ones, and where insects are abundant enough to supply food natu- rally for them. Near San Francisco there are a number of frog ranches. In 1903, according to Mary Heard in Out West for July, 1904, one ranch sold to San Francisco markets 2,600 dozen frog's legs netting $1,800. This was considered poor. Frog's legs are sold to hotels and restau- rants, and bring in New York, according to size and season, from fifty cents to a dollar a pound. Tons of frogs come to New York mar- kets each year from Canada, Michigan, and from the south and west. Few people out- side of the cities eat them. The United States Fish Commissioners report the yearly product to be: Arkansas, 58,900 lbs, valued at $4,162; Indiana, 24,000 lbs., valued at $5,126; Ohio, 14,000 lbs., valued at $2,340; Vermont, 5,500 lbs., valued at $825, etc. — a total of $22,953. The enormous and increasing prices of 277 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY large diamond-backed turtles, and the cheap- ness of little ones shows that maturing, at least, if not actually breeding them, would be well worth investigation. Many wealthy New Yorkers send direct to Maryland for their supplies. Where turtle meat is bot- tled or canned, the snapping turtle and the common box tortoise are sometimes used as "substitutes." Both are capital eating. The carp is one of the most excellent fresh water fish, and is of great value on account of the facility of culture and the enormous extent to which this is carried on. "In Europe some artificial ponds com- prise an area of no less than 20,000 acres, and the proceeds amount to about 500,000 pounds of carp per annum." (Hessel, in "Carp and its Culture.") It attains the weight of three to four pounds in three years without artificial feeding, and much more under more favor- able conditions. It lives to a great age and continues to grow aU the while. 278 NOVEL LIVE STOCK "In Europe it is common to see carp weighing from thirty to forty pounds and more, measuring nearly three and one-half feet in length and two and three-quarters feet in circumference." It lives on vegetable food, insects, larva and worms, and wlU not attack other fishes or their spawn. It is easy to raise, and, provided certain general rules are followed, success will attend its culture. The localities best adapted to a carp pond are those in which there is sufficient water at hand for the summer as well as the win- ter. A mud or loam soil is best adapted for such a pond. A rocky, gravelly ground is not suited for carp; the water should be the same depth aU the year, as variation has an injurious effect on the fish. Carp spawn in the spring. In stocking a pond three females are calculated to two males. The females bear a great number of eggs, but only a small nimiber are im- pregnated. The most liberal estimate will 279 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY not exceed from 800 to 1,000 to one spawner, the aggregate per acre amounting to from 4,000 to 5,000. The large cities containing large num- bers of Europeans furnish the principal markets for carp. The Jewish people will not, as -a rule, buy carp unless they are alive, so it is not an uncommon thing to see fish dealers in the Hebrew quarters pushing tln-ough the streets, carts con- structed as tanks and peddling the carp ahve. Some years ago carp ponds were quite a fad among farmers of the Central West. Americans have been slow to adopt the German carp as a food fish. Trout, of course, can be raised, and the high prices which they bring, both in mar- ket and for fishing privileges, make them very attractive; but the cold running water needed makes opportunity for breeding them with access to a good market generally imavailable to owners of five acres. 280 NOVEL LIVE STOCK There is another fish, famous for its eating quahties, which well repays eifort put upon its production. I refer to the black bass. It is indigenous to the waters of the Eastern states where it is usually found in creeks or rivers. It can be suc- cessfully bred in properly constructed ponds. Mr. Dwight Lyell, in Forest and Stream for March 28, 1903, has this to say about a breeding-place for the small-mouthed black bass. "The pond should be six feet deep in the center and two feet around the edge; the bottom should be of natural sand; water plants should be growing in profusion, particularly such aquatic plants as the Daphnia, Bosmina, and the Corix, to furnish food for the young bass. A good size for a breeding pond is 100 x 100 feet." For spawning, artificial nest frames are built in rectangular form. They are made two feet square without bottoms. On two adjoining sides these frames are four inches high and on the other two adjoining 281 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY sides sixteen inches high. These frames are made because the bass needs a barrier behind which the spawning may be done and which will protect the nest when made. For raising the fish to a size large enough for food, ponds can be of any convenient size. In, order to keep the water in health- ful condition the pond must be fed by a flowing brook with some provision to pre- vent the water being disturbed by freshets. This can usually be arranged by a sluice to carry off the surplus water during heavy rains. Black bass raised in shallow ponds will take the fly all summer, so that con- siderable may be made from fishing privileges. In the absence of minnows, which are tho food of the bass, they must be fed on fresh liver cut in threads like an angle worm to tempt the fish. Even then the liver diet must be varied by feeding minnows from September untU the bass goes into winter quarters. In no other way can fer- ^3 NOVEL LIVE STOCK tile eggs be assured for the spring hatch- ing. Minnows left in the pond all winter wiE breed and so furnish fry on which the young bass can feed the next summer." What has been said refers particularly to the small-mouthed black bass. The con- ditions are substantially the same for the large-mouthed bass (which grows to a much larger size), except that the bottom may be made of Spanish moss imbedded in cement. Mr. Lyell is also authority for this point. There is a growing market for the young bass or fingerUngs to stock streams and ponds. The relation between the producer of stock fish and those who expect to raise bass of a marketable size is about the same as exists between the professional seed grower and the market gardener. It is much better for the small farmer who has or can make an artificial pond to buy his fingerlings from the professional breeder, who has facilities which are too elaborate to be duplicated on a small scale. THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Fish culture, except under Government auspices, is little known in the United States. American Homes and Gardens for March, 1906, has an account of the breeding of pheasants, which is of interest. That it is possible to breed pheasants, even around an ordinary suburban home, is shown by Mr. Homer Davenport, the famous cartoonist, who succeeded in breeding and raising some of the choicest pheasants on his small place at Morris Plains, New Jersey. A great variety of species are commonly bred, but all of them came from China or India. The pheasant can be tamed by careful handling, but cats and dogs and other small animals must be kept away. The pheasantry should be placed on high, well-drained ground with a southern ex- posure, where the soil is good enough to raise clover, oats, and barley. The quar- ters for pheasants and the management are very much hke those for fancy NOVEL LIVE STOCK chickens. The yard should be enclosed by- wire netting both on sides and top to keep the birds from wandering away; and there should be houses for roosting and breeding with nesting quarters attached. In Central Park, New York, the run- ning space allotted to three or four birds is not more than ten by twenty feet, and Mr. George Ethelbert Walsh, tells of a case where sixty pheasants were kept in excellent condition in a house ten by fifty feet, with five yards attached, averaging 10 X 25 feet. However, with pheasants, as with aU the bird family, especially turkeys, the more ground they have for ranging the less liable they avlU be to disease. The chief difficulty in breeding game birds like the pheasant, is to secure the insects, such as flies, maggots, and ant-eggs which are the natural food of the young. Sufficient green food like lettuce, turnip tops, cab- bage, etc., must also be provided. There is always a market at fancy prices for more 285 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY of the matured birds than can possibly be supphed. Some people make money in breeding or training fancy birds like canaries, mocking birds, finches, parrots, and so on; but this industry can be carried on almost as weU in rooms in the city as in the country. Special- izing on any kind of animal rearing, must be gone into with extreme caution, because in the breeding of animals there are many factors to be dealt with which do not confront the breeder of plants. Make haste slowly, and before branching out be sure that you master each step in its turn. An industry which is practically un- known in this country, but which flourishes in Burgundy, France, is the raising of snails for food. Those who are shocked by this will be surprised to learn that snail culture was practiced by the Romans at the time of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, as Jacques Boyer says in ^American Homes and Gardens for March, £86 NOVEL LIVE STOCK 1906. The snail lays from fifty to sixty eggs annually. They are deposited in a smooth hole prepared for them in the ground and hatched within twenty days. So rapidly do they grow that they are ready for market six or eight weeks after hatching. The snaU park is made by enclosing a plot of damp, limy soil with smooth boards coated with tar to prevent the snails climbing out and held in place by outside stakes strong enough to with- stand the wind. The boards must pene- trate the soil to the depth of eight inches at least, and at a level with the ground they must have a sort of shelf to prevent the snails from burrowing under them. When the snail encounters an obstacle in its path, it lays its eggs, sensible beast. Ten thousand snails can be raised on a plot of land one hundred by two hundred feet. The ground is plowed deeply in the spring, the snaUs are placed on it and covered with from two to four inches of 287 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY moss or straw which is kept damp. They must be fed daily with lettuce, cabbage, vine leaves, or grass; as they eat at night, they are fed shortly before sunset. Aro- matic herbs, like mint, parsley, etc., are planted in the enclosure to improve the flavor of the snaUs. In October, the snails having become fat through the summer, retire in their sheUs, the mouths of which they close with a thin gelatinous covering. They are now ready for picking, and are put on screens or trays which are piled together in storehouses, where they remain several months without food. When the fast has been sufficiently prolonged, the shells are brushed up and the snails cooked in salt water in a great pot holding about ten thousand. When cooked, they are immediately sent to the consumer in wooden boxes holding from fifty to two hundred. The business is a very profitable one, as the snaU is considered a great dehcacy by epicures. 288 NOVEL LIVE STOCK Perhaps the silk worm is not exactly in place in a chapter on Novel Live Stock. But there is money in silk-worm culture, as the Department of Agriculture at Washington will start any person in the business with a complete outfit and wiU buy all good cocoons at from ninety cents to one dollar fifteen per pound. The main difficulty is lack of food, as the worm thrives best on the leaf of the white mul- berry tree. The Government, however, wiU distribute young trees, which in two years will bear enough leaves to supply food. The labor of silk-worm rearing aU comes in one month. It can be carried on in any large, airy room. The eggs are hatched by the summer heat, and the worm does not become a heavy eater until the last two weeks. It sheds its skin four times, and after the final moult it climbs into loose brush prepared for it and spins the cocoon. These are then dried and shipped to Washington. 289 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY At the south where the climate is well suited for sUk culture, an obstacle has been found in the unadaptabihty of the cheap labor, particularly colored labor, to the deli- cate handling, and especially winding of the sUk from the cocoons. Many people make money by breeding dogs. Not much land is required and very little capital; as kennels can be multiplied as demand increases. There is always a profitable market for dogs, and some of the lap species, like the King Charles spaniel, bring fabulous prices. Hunting dogs such as setters, pointers, retrievers, reaUy require a game country and a practical hunter who can train the pup- pies, to make much of a success of it; with these, if properly handled, the business is a safe one, as there is little other tech- nical skUl required beyond ordinary care such as is given to domestic animals. Cats are a better venture than dogs be- cause they are sold to women who wiU pay S90 NOVEL LIVE STOCK any price for what strikes their fancy. Fashions in cats change about as fast as fashions in coats, but cats breed faster than coats wear out, so it is quick business. Just now, coon cats, tortoise-shell cats and bizarre colors of Persian cats are mostly in vogue, but the tailless Manx cat, and even freaks like the six-toed cat and lynx cats, always find a ready market. Of course, these can be bred in the city, but if it is done in a large enough way to make a Mving out of it, the Board of Health and the neighbors will raise — some- thing else. Fishing and hunting are primitive indus- tries of which we think only in cormection with wild land. But every bay and pond and wood wUl supply at least some sub- sistence or profit to the intelligent seeker. Oysters, clams, crabs, mussels, frogs, and common fish are found in abundance in many places, and help out with table ex- penses. Even English sparrows are edible. 291 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Almost any wild animal is much more wholesome to eat than pork. Squirrels and even weasels are cleaner feeders than pigs, and the Indians eat them with great rehsh, while everybody knows the keenness of the darkies for "coon." The woodchuck is a nuisance to the farmer, covering his field with loads of subsoil from the burrow and then eating the tender sprouts; and the farmer does not know enough to eat his tender corpse, but he is good to eat. If a rabbit and a chicken could have young, it would taste like a woodchuck. Muskrats, mink, raccoons, and gray and fox squirrels are easily trapped; and the skins of those killed in that way find a steady market. Skins of poisoned animals do not seU so well, as they are rough and dry. In order to be profitable, these do not need to pay very well in proportion to the time they take, since they are done as recreation and at odd times. NOVEL LIVE STOCK But there is a larger field in raising wild animals, which our Western people have not been slow to avail themselves of, and we hear of men being prosecuted for raising wolves, coyotes, and bob-cats, a kind of lynx, to get the government bounty for the snouts or scalps. In a legitimate way profit may be had from such animals. Ernest Thompson Seton has an article in Country Life in America for January, 1906, on raising fur-bearing animals for profit; this offers a good chance for small capital and large inteUigence. He suggests the beaver, mink, otter, skunk and marten, and says that whoever would begin fur- farming is better ofi* with five acres than with five hundred. He describes two fox ranches at Dover, Maine. They raise twenty to forty silver foxes a year, on a little more than half an acre of land. The silver fox's fur is one of the most valua- ble on the market and seUs at an average 293 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY of $150 a pelt, that is, $8,000 to $6,000 gross for the year's work. Foxes are not expensive to breed, their food consisting chiefly of sour milk and cornmeal or flour made into a cake, and a little meat about once a week. The capital required is small. A fence for the enclosure should be of one and a half inch mesh No. 16 galvanized wire, ten feet high, with an overhang of eighteen inches to keep the foxes from escaping, and is about the only outlay except for purchase of stock. Stakes should be driven close to the fence to keep them from burrowing out. They are naturally clean animals, and with careful attention are free from dis- ease. Mr. Stevens reports that in his two years' experience he has had twenty to thirty foxes and lost none by disease, while Mr. Norton, with five years' experience, carrying thirty to forty, reports that one to two die each year. g94 NOVEL LIVE STOCK They breed as well in captivity as in their wild state, usually bringing forth a litter of six or seven in the spring. These breed the following spring and their fur is ready for market the following December. And now breeders sell fine stock to other breeders who are entering the industry, sometimes getting three to four hundred dollars per pair. Mr. Seton remarks, "I am satisfied that any man who has made a success of hens can make a success of foxes, with this advantage for the latter — a fox requires no more space or care than a hen, but is worth twenty times as much, and so gives a chance for returns twenty times as large." This is an infant industry, but if others can get the same results, it will pay hand- somely. To get the best furs, however, requires a district where the winters are cold and long. There are a few skunk farms in the West. It is said that the scent gland can 9.95 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY be taken out, and that the farms do well. Their oil is also said to be valuable. But while skunks are so common there cannot be much in breeding them. S96 CHAPTER XVI WHERE TO GO INTENSIVE cultivation, raising a big crop on little land, can be carried on most profitably near areas of dense popu- lation; for perishable products, like fruits and vegetables, can be best marketed near the consumer. The limit for de- livery by wagon is about fifteen to twenty miles, and then only if roads are good; if the land selected lies on the line of a railroad which gives equal terms to way freight and to through freight, he will fare nearly as well. Railroads control ag- ricultural development. Sparsely settled re- gions always practice extensive cultivation, raising light crops on big farms, because only such crops can be grown as can be raised on large areas by machinery, and 297 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY are not perishable. Staples like corn, wheat, pork and beef are transported at low prices for long distances by the railroads. This forces the settlers in newly opened portions of the country to sell in a market created by the raUroads, in competition with what is produced within the areas of in- tensive cultivation, i. e., with access to adjacent markets. So we find the bonanza wheat farms of California, the Dakotas and the Canadian Northwest, the pampas of the Argentine, the Steppes of Russia, and the Indian up- lands devoted to wheat raising; in the United States corn belt, fields of from five to twenty thousand acres are stiU not un- common. Conversely, intensive cultivation is most advanced in China, where a dense popula- tion forced the people long ago to bring into use every foot of tillable soil that is left open to them. Near the towns of the United States a 298 WHERE TO GO few market gardeners supply such viege- tables as the people do not raise for them- selves. The states along the Atlantic sea- board have all the facilities for successful intensive cultivation — a dense population and idle, cultivable land. In choosing a location, the home crofter should well con- sider his experience, and try to enter a community where he can engage in anal- ogous pursuits. Dairy regions never have enough men who understand cattle and horses; fruit-growing districts always need experienced pickers; market garden regions need men who understand rotating crops and making hot-beds, transplanting, etc. If you have a little money, you can probably do best by buying and draining some swamp land, which is the most pro- ductive of all, as it contains the washings of the upland for centuries. Swamp land can usually be cleared and drained for from thirty to forty dollars per acre. It can be bought very cheap and when ready 299 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY to cultivate will have increased many times in value. The next best is the abandoned or worn- out farm. Proper methods of cultivation will bring it back to more than its original fertility. The Eastern states from Maine to Virginia abound with them at from two to twenty dollars per acre. In many cases the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked. The nearest land easily available in the East is in the State of New York. The writer believes it is true that "there are twenty thousand farms for sale in this state, and nearly all at such low prices and upon such favorable terms as to make them available for anyone desiring to engage in agriculture or have a farm home. The soil of these farms is not exhausted, but on the con- trary is, with proper cultivation, very pro- ductive. Nearly aU have good buildings and fences and are supplied with good water and plenty of wood for farm pur- goo ^ T3 Q -a WHERE TO GO poses, and in nearly all cases have apple and other fruit trees upon them." (List of Farms occupied and unoccupied for sale in New York State. Bureau of Informa- tion and Statistics, Bulletin No. 1, State of New York, Department of Agriculture.) These farms are distributed all over the state, some in nearly every county. In Sulhvan Coxmty, for example, there are sixty farms for sale ranging in price from ten to one hundred dollars per acre. These can, almost without exception, be bought by small payments, balance on long mortgages, and it is wonderful how cheap they are. In Ulster County thirty farms, some of which I have seen, are offered for sale at trifling prices, as for in- stance, in the language of the Bulletin, "One hundred and fifty acres in the town of Olive, three miles from Broadhead. One hundred acres of timber, twenty acres under cultivation, the house twenty by twenty-four, good barn, well watered, can 301 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY be bought for two dollars per acre." Nu- merous others are in the market from five dollars per acre up, and so it goes through the State, from Wyoming County in the extreme western end, where farms ranging from thirty to three hundred acres are in the market at from thirty to forty dollars per acre, to St. Lawrence County in the north, where land can be bought as low as fifteen doUars per acre, or even less, as the "P. B. O'Mally farm, two hundred and thirty acres, nine miles from Potsdam Station, one mile from Colton P. O., good soU, fifty acres of timber, good one and one-half story house, barns large and good, price two thousand dollars," or a httle less than nine dollars per acre. When it is considered that these lands are within easy access to established markets with transportation and mail facilities, rural delivery, and telephone, a proper idea may be formed of their value in opportunity. The authority quoted further states that "prob- 302 WHERE TO GO ably fifty thousand agricultural laborers can find employment on the farms of New York at good wages. Families particu- larly are wanted to occupy rented houses and work farms on shares." Wages for farm hands run from twenty to thirty dol- lars per month with board. Men who know how to milk are especially in demand throughout the dairy regions. This condi- tion makes it possible for experienced farmers, although entirely without money, to get to the soil. Over three hundred thousand aliens set- tled in the cities of New York State dur- ing the fiscal year of 1904-5. These people could be got out of the cities where they are httle needed, into adjacent country dis- tricts where they are much needed. In the Real Estate Record and Guide of September 22nd, 1906, Mr. A. L. Langdon says: "It is most remarkable that here are on Long Island, within from thirty-five to seventy miles of New York, 303 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY thousands of acres of land which have never heen cultivated, which have for years produced nothing but cordwood, and which the owners aUow to be overrun with fire almost every year. A large part of this land has soil two or three feet deep under- laid with gravel. The best water in the world is abundant and the climate is more equable than on the mainland, and in each locahty where any reasonable eifort has been made to cultivate the soU, it has pro- duced plentifully of aU fruits and vege- tables which can be grown in this latitude." Long Island should produce aU the fruit, vegetables, poultry, eggs and milk needed by its own residents, with a large surplus for the city markets, instead of getting, as it does, a large part of its supply of these things from the city. From Calverton (seventy miles from New York) to the extreme east end of the island north of Peconic Bay and between Eastport (seventy-one miles from New WHERE TO GO York) and Amagansett, are some of the most productive farms in the country. From these farms are raised the pota- toes and cauliflower for which Long Island is becoming famous, and near Eastport are the largest duck farms in the country. To stimulate an interest in the development of the agricultural possibilities of the territory nearer New York, by showing the valuable qualities of the soil, the Long Island Rail- road Company purchased a tract of about eighteen acres near Wading River for an experimental farm. When it is considered that about a quar- ter of a million acres of this land so close to the city is now scrub oak and uncul- tivated waste, and that there are about a million adult workers in the city, the im- portance of the experiment is obvious; es- pecially as we learn from the United States census that over ten thousand of these workers are already in agricultural pur- suits within the city limits. 305 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "Here midway on Long Island, and just beyond the limits for a man to locate who expects to earn his living by daily work in the city, is a territory about forty miles long and ten miles wide which by intensive farming would yield a good living for more than two hundred thousand inhabi- tants, and this land can be had at reason- able prices. In this agricultural section, a man of smaU means who expects to live on the land the year round, should purchase a plot not too small to produce enough to support himself and family and a surplus to sell, not less than six acres. Probably all men have more or less land-hunger — a desire t o own land — and it is a worthy object to encourage to the extent of in- ducing a man to purchase what he can pay for and be satisfied with, but it is a shame- ful thing to induce a poor man, who has to earn his living in New York, to buy on the instaUment plan a small lot so far from his place of emplojrment that he can- 306 WHERE TO GO not live on it and travel to and from his work every day, and where there is the strongest probability that he will never make more than two or three payments, and will consequently lose what he does pay." The writer hears of one plot which was sold nineteen times and the contracts defaulted on after payments, before anyone took title. If the seeker is not satisfied with the opportunities which the State of New York oifers, he may turn to New Jersey, equally accessible and equally rich in chances. New Jersey Year-Book, pages 76-7: "There are in the southern part of the State large tracts of land which are still uncleared, or covered with brushwood, and which are adapted to tillage and capable of produc- ing large crops of small fruits and market garden vegetables. The wood on them is mainly scrub oak, with some dwarfed pitch- pine and yellow pine, and hence they are called oak lands to distinguish them from 307 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY the more sandy lands and tracts on which the pitch-pine grows ahnost exclusively. The latter are known as pine lands. The total area of cleared (farm) lands in the southern division of the State, southeast of the marl helt, is about 450,000 acres. The pine-land belts have an aggregate area of 486,000 acres, making at least 800,000 acres accessible by railways from the large cities and also near to tide-water naviga- tion. The maps of the Geological Survey show the location and the extent of these lands, their railway lines and their relation to the settlements already made and to the cities. "The soils of these tracts are sandy end not naturally so rich and fertile as the more heavy clay soils of the hmestone, the red shale and the marl districts of the State, but they are not so sandy and so coarse-grained as to be non-productive, like some of the pine-land areas. The latter are often deficient in plant food and are de- 308 WHERE TO GO servedly characterized as pine barrens, being too poor for farm purposes. The growth of oak and pine, as well as chemical analyses, shows that the oak-land soils contain the ele- ments of plant production. They are not so well suited to pasturage or to continuous cropping as naturally rich virgin soUs; they are better fitted for raising vegetables, melons, sweet potatoes, small fruits, peaches, and pears than wheat, Indian corn, hay, and other staples. The eminent superiority of this kind of farming in New Jersey over the old routine of wheat, corn, hay, and potatoes is well known. These South Jersey soils are easily cleared of brushwood or stand- ing timber, and of stumps, with a hand or horse-power puUer which is a cheap affair, and the wood is salable in all this part of the State at remunerative prices, often bringing more than the original cost of the land. The long working season and the short and mild winter favor the arrangement of work, so that all is done with the least 809 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY outlay for help. They also favor the mos- quitoes. "The success of Hammonton, Egg Har- bor City, Vineland, and other places is notable, and equally good results are to be had at a hundred or more places as well situated as they are. These lands are sold at low figures, and the settler saves in capital and interest account. "Messrs. Gilbert and O'Calligan, of Phila- delphia, have sold in the last few years over sixteen thousand acres of such Jersey lands, mostly in parcels of five acres each, to farmers who are setthng there and mostly doing weU. Only the difficulty of getting money to help in building inter- feres with rapid settlement. "The West Jersey Railway, the Penn- sylvania, and the Philadelphia and Read- ing's Atlantic City Railroad, the Philadel- phia and Seashore Railway, the New Jersey Southern Railroad, and other branch roads, afford excellent facilities for access 310 WHERE TO GO to New York, Philadelphia, and the cities of the State. The Cohansey, Maurice, and Mullica rivers head well up near the north- west limits of these lands, and their navi- gable reaches run for miles across them. The waters of the Delaware Bay and the ocean are within a few miles of a large part of this oak-land domain. "The advantages of an old settled and Eastern State, within easy reach of these large markets, of land which is easily tilled and generous and quick in its response to feeding, and at low prices, make them equal to, if not better than, the rich prairie soils of a new West, or the low prices and cheap lands of the abandoned hillsides of New England." Wages for farm labor are about the same as for New York — ^twenty to twenty- five dollars per month. The canning and fruit industries make room for a large number of people in the late summer and fall, who may thus, by taking a temporary Sll THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY place, find some permanent location where they may improve their health and fortunes. "Delaware also offers unequaled oppor- tunities to immigrants. It is ideally sit- uated on the Atlantic Ocean and the Dela- ware Bay, and is penetrated by numerous creeks and rivers. "The railroad, steam, and electric facilities of the State are developing steadily year by year, while every section of the State possesses easily navigable streams, with vessels for carrying freight and passengers. "Over fifteen millions of people live with- in a radius of three hundred miles; the large majority reside in cities and towns and furnish the finest markets in the world. Within five hundred miles are more than one-third of the people of aU North America. "Wilmington is a city of seventy-five thousand people, is growing rapidly, and is becoming a great manufacturing place. It is just on the edge of Pennsylvania. 812 WHERE TO GO "Dover, the center of the State, is by rail 75 mUes from Philadelphia, 165 miles from New York, about 400 miles from Buffalo, so that the largest and best fruit markets of the world may be reached in twenty- four hours. "These people may be reached in one day by the luscious fruits that grow in Dela- ware, and everyone of them is perfectly happy when he gets a Delaware peach. Many other Delaware products are as good as the peaches. "As cattle and wheat raising developed in the great West, Delaware people thought that they were ruined. They did not change at once, but slowly discovered that the light lands are wonderfully productive of fruits and vegetables, and that they pay much better than cattle and grain ever could. But these new methods have not been adopted in all parts of the State, so that land neglected and unprofitable is for sale. The tides of immigration have swept SIS THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY westward and left Delaware untouched. Men, money, and enterprise are needed. "There are few unoccupied or aban- doned farms in Delaware." The land is mostly held by descendants of the early settlers, who form a species of landed aristocracy. Lately, owing to the younger members of these families having become established in the newer States and on ac- count of the death or incapacity of the older members left in possession, there has been a marked tendency to sell off these farms. However, "a large proportion of the farms in Delaware are not for sale at any price. Some of them have been in the same family for generations, and if put on the market would seU from fifty to two hundred doUars per acre." The soU is all the way from a heavy white oak clay, which is too stiff and too sticky for most crops, to very hght sand. The heaviest clay is made lighter and more porous, and the Hghtest sand is read- 314 WHERE TO GO ily made retentive of moisture and ex- tremely productive, by plowing in different kinds of crops as green manure, such as cow peas, soy beans, the vetches, etc.; crim- son clover, winter oats, rye, turnips, and numerous other crops may be sown in August or later, and produce a fine crop for turning under early in the spring. Crimson clover grows nearly all winter. Pure cold water is reached at from twenty to fifty feet by dug or driven wells. The climate is good; there are no cy- clones. There is some damp weather in winter, but there are no malignant fevers, and there is little or no malaria, except in a few marshy places. There are some mosquitoes and flies, but they are not es- pecially troublesome, and there are no poisonous reptiles. The popxilation is mostly native, five- sixths white, one-sixth colored. The white population is almost entirely of Anglo- Saxon descent. 315 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY "Perfect titles may be secured, but the title should always be searched by a com- petent lawyer, the usual fee for which is ten dollars. "Farm hands receive from fifteen to eighteen dollars per month and board, for a season of nine or ten months, sometimes for the whole year. Day hands receive from seventy-five cents to one doUar and a half per day and board themselves." Those who are tempted by the advertise- ments for fruit-pickers should beware. Delaware, hke some other states, allows fees to constables and to the "squires" — Justices of the Peace they would be else- where — for arrests, and it is a common practice to advertise for fruit-pickers, then arrest them as tramps when they come, and the next day release them on condition that they will leave the county at once — and leave the trap open for the next comer. Delaware peaches have made fortunes 316 WHERE TO GO for many, but will make still greater for- tunes in the future for the owners of the land. Pears, plums, grapes, watermelons and canteloupes thrive, find an ideal home, and small fruits all flourish. Sweet po- tatoes yield bountifully and are of the finest quality. Asparagus and early white potatoes pay handsome profits. Tomatoes, the great canning crop, are grown by the thousands of acres. "The grasses and clovers grow in lux- uriance, and hence dairying and beef pro- duction are profitable. Poultry pays as well as anyw^here else; chickens often run on green clover all through the open winter. "The game consists of various species of ducks, quails, reed birds, hares, marsh rab- bits, and other small creatures. Shad, trout, herring, crocus, black bass, pike, white fish, rock fish, oysters, clams, crabs, and terrapin are abundant in Delaware waters." sn THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY The tax in the rural counties is sixty cents on the hundred dollars. Besides this there are taxes on business and a very light school tax. There is no state tax, yet the state makes large appropriations for the support of the public schools, which are free to everybody. Maryland has established a State Bu- reau of Immigration in Baltimore to give information to home-seekers, and advise them as to choice of location, opportunities for getting started in agricultural produc- tion, and aid them in any way consistent with a State Bureau. Most of these facts, after careful inquiry, are taken from such reports. Southern Marjdand and the eastern shore are especially adapted to gardening and trucking, as well as fruit growing. Land is cheap and can be purchased in tracts of any size from an acre upwards, at from ten to fifty dollars per acre. Farms from twenty acres to seven hundred acres and up 318 WHERE TO GO are for sale in nearly every county in the state. The removal of a large part of the negro population from the country to the cities has resulted in the partition of the large estates into smaller farms, thus afford- ing an opportunity for home-seekers who are seeking cheap land amid congenial surroundings. Nearly all of these farms have buildings, some in need of repair, others in very good condition. For those who wish to avoid the hard work of breaking woodlands, the eastern and western shores offer abundant well- cultivated lands with buildings, orchards and woods, in the immediate vicinity of navigable rivers and railways, on good roads at from fourteen dollars per acre upwards. That seems cheap. For settlers who are accustomed to mountainous regions, western Maryland has land for sale at even cheaper rates. "There are many large tidal marshes in Maryland, as might be expected in a terri- 319 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY tory watered like this state. They are of the richest soil to be found, because the Chesapeake Bay is a great river valley, receiving the drainage of a vast area of fertile land, comprising nearly one-third of New York, and nearly all of the great agricultural states of Pennsylvania, Mary- land, and Virginia. Every year this drain- age brings down a black sediment, called oyster mud, which is deposited on the marsh lands and enriches the soil, making it, with proper cultivation, of productivity like that of the rice and wheat fields of Egypt. These unreclaimed lands are used chiefly for grain." Proper drainage of small tracts of this land would bring unsurpassed and abso- lutely untouched fertility. The Chesapeake river valley is not so large as that of the Nile or Ganges, but is of enough consequence to play an impor- tant part in human affairs and to support in comfort and prosperity a population as large as that of many famous states. 320 WHERE TO GO "The eastern shore is uniformly level, with good roads. The proximity of the ocean and the hay greatly modifies the temperature. It has a great trunk railway, with connections along its entire length, called the Delaware Division of the Penn- sylvania railroad, which furnishes direct transportation to Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities." "On the eastern shore there are many thousand acres of land devoted to garden truck, and the strawherry crop has of late years become of importance. Over one hundred carloads of strawberries are shipped daily during the season to the Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston markets." Land properly cultivated will yield four thousand quarts of strawberries to an acre. The cost of production, including picking and delivery, amounts to $185.55; the pro- ceeds at seven cents a quart, to $280, making a net profit of $94.45 per acre. 321 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY The canning of various fruits and vege- tables has grown to be larger than that of any other state and is one of the most profitable of the industries of Maryland. The principal articles canned are peaches, peas, and tomatoes. The tomato crop is also profitable to the grower. The young plants are set out in the spring; many do this with a machine, but two persons can easily plant seven acres in a day by hand. Th3 canning factories pay on an average eight dollars per ton for tomatoes, and an acre will produce from six to eighteen tons, according to the quality of the soil. All such products bring better prices now in Maryland markets than they did before canning was resorted to. The Maryland tin can is known wherever civilization reaches. Tobacco is extensively produced only in Southern Maryland, although it can be raised in any section of the state. WHERE TO GO In the neighborhood of the larger cities trucking and fruit growing are profitable, combined with poultry raising, often on farms of not more than five or ten acres. Many farmers devote part of their time successfully to bees, and there is nowhere a better climate for flowers than that of Maryland. Two English florists who have settled in Baltimore County, ten and thir- teen miles northeast of the city, daily send to all parts of the United States and even to Canada many large boxes of beautiful roses, carnations, violets, and other choice flowers. Both of these men began on a small scale and have prospered. The farmer who has a couple of thou- sand dollars to pay cash for a small farm in Maryland is assured of a good living. But also a less favored settler, if he has only from four to eight hundred dollars, can have a good start in Maryland, and probably as good a chance for independ- ence and prosperity as anywhere. 323 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Families of immigrants when traveling to the Western, Northwestern, and Southern states of America, have to spend from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars for railroad tickets from New York to their destination; by going to these adjoin- ing states they can save all that money, and invest it in land. The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration also publishes information for the home-seeker. To most people the name Virginia car- ries with it hmitless vistas of tobacco fields covered with darkies plying the hoe, or picking oif the ubiquitous worm. Before the War this picture would have been a true one; but since the awakening of the younger generation to a better understand- ing of her resources, together with the withdrawal of large numbers of the colored people into industrial occupations, no state offers more attractive inducements to the homecrofter than Virginia. In climate, 3S4 WHERE TO GO diversity of soils, fruits, forests, water sup- ply, mineral deposits, including mountain and valley, she offers unsurpassed advan- tages. Truly did Captain John Smith, the adventurous father of Virginia, suggest that "Heaven and earth never agreed bet- ter to frame a place for man's habitation." Virginia lies between the extremes of heat and cold, removed alike from the sultry, protracted summers of the more southern states, and the severe winters and devastating storms and cyclones of the North and Northwest. Its limits north and south correspond to Cahfornia and south- ern Europe. The climate is mUd and healthful. The winters are less severe than in the North- ern and Northwestern states, or even the western localities of the same latitude, while the occasional periods of extreme heat in the summer are not more oppress- ive than in many portions of the North. Tidewater Virginia, or the Coastal Plain, 325 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY as it is sometimes called, receives the name from the fact that the streams that pene- trate it feel the ebb and flow of the tides from the ocean up to the head of naviga- tion. It consists chiefly of broad and level plains, whUe a considerable portion, nearest to the bay, has shallow bays and estuaries, and marshes that are in most instances reached only by the ocean tides. These marshes aboimd with wild duck and sora. Tidewater is mainly an alluvial country. The soil is chiefly light, sandy loam, un- derlaid with clay. Its principal productions are fruits and early vegetables, which are raised in extensive "market gardens," and shipped in large quantities to northern cities. The fertilizing minerals — ^gypsum, marl, and greensand — abound, and their judicious use readily restores the lands when exhausted by improvident cultivation. Middle Virginia is a wide, undulating plain, crossed by many rivers that have cut their channels to a considerable depth and 326 WHERE TO GO are bordered by alluvial bottom lands that are very productive. The soil consists of clays with a subsoil of disintegrated sand- stone rocks, and varies according to the nature of the rock from which it is formed. The principal productions of Middle Vir- ginia are corn, wheat, oats, and tobacco. The tobacco raised in this section and in Piedmont, known as the "Virginia Leaf," is the best grown and the best known in the United States. In this section, as in Tidewater, the low bottom lands formed by the sediment of the waters, are excep- tionally productive. The second bottoms, as they are called, being a more elevated terrace, have usually a subsoil of dark, but sometimes yellow, clay and are very rich. The Piedmont section is diversified and surpassingly picturesque. The soil is heavier than that of middle Virginia, the subsoil being of stiff and dark red clay. On the slopes of the Blue Ridge grapes of deli- cious flavor grow luxuriantly. These pro- S27 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY duce excellent wines, and the clarets have a wide fame. The pippin apples of this section are of unrivaled excellence. The "Great Valley," as it is descriptively called, is in the general configuration, one continuous vaUey, included between the two mountain chains that extend throughout the state; it is one of the most abundantly watered regions on the face of the globe. Deep limestone beds form the floor of the Great VaUey, and from these beds the soil derives an exceeding fertiUty, peculiarly adapted to the growth of grasses and grain, and it bears the name of the "garden spot" of the state. Five trunk lines of raiboads penetrate and intersect the state. The hues of steamboats that ply the navigable streams of Eastern Virginia afi^ord commercial communication for large sections of the state with the markets of this country and of Europe. Norfolk and Newport News maintain communication with the Euro- 328 WHERE TO GO pean markets by steamers and vessels, while from these ports is also kept up an extensive commerce along the Atlantic sea- board. These ports are nearer than is New York to the great centers of popu- lation, and areas of production, of the West and Northwest. Market garden crop^ of every descrip- tion can be grown. The following result was obtained on a four-acre patch near Norfolk: "The owner stated that in September last he sowed spinach on four acres. Between Christmas and the first of March following he cut and sold the spinach at the rate of one hundred barrels to the acre, at a price ranging from two to seven dollars per bar- rel — an average of $4.50 per barrel. Early in March the four acres were set out to lettuce, setting the plants in the open air with no protection whatever, 175,000 plants on the four acres. He shipped 450 half- barrel baskets of lettuce to the acre, at a 329 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY price ranging from $2 to $2,75 per basket. "Early in April, just before the lettuce was ready to ship, he planted snap beans between the lettuce rows; and to-day, June 2nd, these are the finest beans we have seen this season. "Owner says he will have 150 half-bar- rel baskets to the acre; but we think he win surely have nearer 250. However, 150 will be enough, for he will sell the same for from $1 up to $2 per basket; perhaps even higher. "The last week in May he planted can- teloupes between the bean rows, which, when marketed in July, wiU make four crops from the same land in one year's time. The canteloupes wiU be good for 250 crates to the acre, and the price will run from $1 to $1.50 per crate. A care- ful investigation of these 'facts, figures, and features,' wiU show that his gross sales will easily reach $2,000 per acre; his net profits depend largely upon the man 330 WHERE TO GO auai the management; but they mrefy should :nat be less than $1,000 clear, clean profit to the acre." "This is for farming done all out of tdoors. No hot-house or hot-bed work — ^not a bit of it, with no extra expense for hot- Ibeds, cold frames or hot-houses." "'Intensive," thorough tillage and care of the soil will probably pay as well here as at amy point in the United States. Apples are the principal fruit crop of the state. There is a yearly increasing number of trees. In one of the valley counties a seventeen-year-old orchard of 1,150 trees produced an apple crop in 1905 which brought the owner $10,000, another of fifty twenty-year-old trees brought $700. Mr. H. E. Vandeman, one of the best- known horticulturists in the country, says that there is not in all North America a better place to plant orchards than in Vir- ginia; on account of its "rich apple soil, ^ood flavor and keeping qualities of the 331 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY fruit, and nearness to the great markets of the East and Europe." The trees attain a fine size and live to a good old age, and produce abundantly. In Patrick County there is a tree nine feet five inches around which has borne 110 bushels of apples at a single crop; other trees have borne even more. One farmer in Albemarle County has received more than $15,000 for a single crop of Albe- marle Pippins grown on twenty acres of land. This pippin is considered the most delicious apple in the world. The fig, pomegranate, and other delicate fruits flourish in the Tidewater region. New England, from Maine to Rhode Is- land, is suffering from one disease — lack of intelligent labor. Twenty years ago the sons and daughters who, in the natural course of events, would have stayed to cultivate the home acres, left to form a part of the west- ward throng making for the level, untouched prairies of Illinois and Iowa. WHERE TO GO The old folks have died or become in- capacitated. New interests chain their chil- dren to adopted homes. Result, — ^unoccu- pied lands by the hundred thousand acres, awaiting energy, skUl, and faith. Ten dollars an acre is the average price for the rocky hUls of New England. The choice river bottoms, and land near the larger cities is as high priced as similar land anywhere else. Intending settlers can buy small areas for little money; usually the smallest farms have good buildings worth in many cases more than the price asked for the whole farm. Climatic condi- tions are not favorable to single cropping. In the old days general farming, grain, beef, sheep, and hogs were the rule; nowa- days, special crops, dairying, fruit grow- ing, etc. Tobacco is the great staple in the rich Connecticut river bottoms, and even on the uplands, if properly manured, it pays from one to three hundred doUars per acre. THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Tobacco can be raised on small areas fiar from the railroad, as, when properly cured ^nd packed for shipment, it is. not perish- able. To many the worst feature of New England is the climate — longi, cold winters and short svmmiers. Maine being farthest north suffers most in this, respect, but that does not prevent her producing hun- dreds of thousands of tons of sweet com for canning and vast quantities of eggs and butter. Fruit does well on the lower coast; a small orchard of peaches or plums wiU in three or four years from planting make a comfortable living. Bush fruits grow in abundance and give never-failing crops. Poultry is pecuharly successful on the rocky hills, because they are nearly always dry or well drained. Dairying can be maiit to pay if near a creamery, or where milk ean be sold at retail. The prospective settler here should bear in mind that where- cver he goes, the first year will produce 334 WHERE TO GO little more than a kitchen garden; the sec- ond enable hiin barely to pull through, and the third give him a start at a permanent income. In farming, as in all other busi- nesses, only those will succeed who know what they want and how to get it; who have selected with care the locality best suited to the special crops they intend to raise; and after having once made a selec- tion, stick until they have compelled success. The lure of the vast West and of the new South is not forgotten; but the time has passed when the young man could go west to take a farm of Uncle Sam's. De- sirable land is too expensive for the pio- neer, and the constant toil and comparative isolation of the prairie farm oifers but a poor sort of liberty, though it still affords a living. But close to the growing towns in those states small plots of land can stiU be had to work Tilth the same bright prospects that are offered near the great metropolis. 335 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY In nearly all the sections within the area of intensive cultivation, timber is stiU plen- tiful enough to make it the cheapest build- ing material; and persons who really want to get to the land can contrive a sufficient shelter, like a pioneer's, for from two to five hundred doUars. 3S6 CHAPTER XVIII CLEARING THE LAND IT is pretty good fun to hack at bushes and to chop trees down and then to chop them up. If there is only a small part of the land to be cleared, a man can easily learn skill with the axe and do it at odd times, but he was a wise old man of whom his little girl said, "When grandpa wants anything, that moment he wants it." It is now that we need the land; but even if it is covered with trees, there is no cause for discouragement. Lumber is so high that the local or portable saw-mill men will buy the timber by the acre. They wiU cut the trees and haul the logs. If you decide to cut a tree yourself, a little inquiry will show for what purpose it win bring the highest price. Locust 337 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY sticks, for example, foiir to six inches thick, will bring in New York ten cents a running foot for insulator pinions. If a maple proves to be either "curly" or "bird's- eye" (this depending not on the variety, but on the accidental undulations of the fibre), it will be in demand for the manu- facture of furniture. Sugar maples ten or fifteen feet high can be transplanted or sold. Nut and fruit trees wiU nearly always be worth keeping. Cedar sticks fourteen feet long will bring fifteen cents in most places for hop and bean poles. See what can be sold instead of burnt, and don't cut down recklessly; an unsalable tree may be valuable as a wind-break or as shade for your house. The wrong tree for shade is the dense foliaged, low-branched tree which forms a solid dome from the ground up. The right tree, in the opinion of Henry Hicks (in Country Life in America for CLEARING THE LAND September, 1905) is the American elm, which ought to be called the umbrella tree. Pliny speaks of the plane tree, our syca- more or buttonwood, as excellent, because of the horizontal branches which, hke win- dow-blinds, allow free passage of the breezes while intercepting the heat of the sun. The ideal shade tree is a canopy Kke a parasol over the house, with high, leafy branches that do not shut off light and air from the windows. This cools a house by keeping the sun off and cools the air by the rapid evaporation from its leaves, and wiU make it ten to fifteen degrees cooler in summer. It will be cheaper and more effective than a combination of awnings, piazza, and eaves. Woodman, spare that tree. Stumps may be burned out. To get a good draught, bore a hole in a slanting direction far down among the roots. The smoke goes through the hole first and then 339 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY the flame, boring the body to the roots deep enough to plow. Land can also be cleared by dynamite. We condense from Edith Loring Fullerton in Farming for August, 1906, on what has been done. To go into the desolate, uncultivated, burned over "waste lands" near a great city and put ten acres under cultivation in the shortest possible space of time was our problem. We undertook it at short notice in an uncertain season — ^the autumn — ^with the determination to get at least a portion of the land seeded down to winter rye be- fore cold weather prohibited further work. United to this problem was that of working a small farm to its utmost capacity rather than half cultivation of a large one, which is difficult to handle from lack of time and labor and an unwise proposi- tion for the East under the most favorable circumstances. Ten acres of scraggy-looking woodland was purchased, sixty-eight miles from New CLEARING THE LAND York City on the north shore of Long Island. The plot had a few second and third growth oak and chestnut trees and "sprouts" along the borders. All else had been burned, and the center of the acreage exhibited the mangled and blackened re- mains of a once thrifty woodland. We proceeded to choose as our helpers native Long Islanders to whom we were desirous of giving the work. We succeeded by strenuous efforts in getting together a "gang" of both colored and white men to the stupendous number of eight. They fell to the work with a right good will, at first cutting down here and trimming up there as directed. However, after giving them a fair trial, we decided that they must be replaced by Itahans. The ques- tion of housing the eighteen Italians soon came up. Tents might be adopted or even the unsanitary "dug-out" be allowed to mar the landscape. A shanty is the usual solution. This was entirely too 341 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Ugly to suit our tastes and also expensive, and useless when the men were through with it. Tents were too airy, as we knew the work would continue until freezing weather, and perhaps well into the winter. We "passed" on the "dug-out." The ideal was something that would be of use after the work of clearing was completed, and for that purpose we decided upon "con- demned" freight cars. They cost but ten doUars each, the railroad being glad to get rid of them. We bought two, ultimately using one for a chicken house and the other as a barn. In the meantime it was decided to remove the stumps by dynamite, as trying to yank them out by stump-pullers or by mattock and plow was both slow and brutal. The ordinary custom of allowing nature to work six years at the stumps and gradually eliminate them in part by decay was not to be thought of. Dynamiter Kissam, of Huntington, a 342 CLEARING THE LAND Long Island expert, arrived and set to work, using fuses for small stumps up to two feet in diameter. With the advent of the Italians work began in earnest; they cleared out every useless tree, cutting cord wood where any could be obtained and burning the branches and charred trees as they went. They also cleared out aU underbrush and burned over the ground thoroughly. The dynamiter with his helper followed them up. This is by far the most exciting and interesting part of clearing land by modern methods. The dynamite is put up in half-pound sticks. They are a little larger than an ordinary candle and are wrapped in heavy yellow parafined paper. One folded end of this paper is opened up and a hole made by a wooden skewer into the dyna- mite stick, which is plastic and resembles graham bread in color and consistency. For magneto-battery work where several 343 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY charges are required, a copper cap in which is a minute quantity of fuhninate of mer- cury, and which requires a spark to ex- plode it, is attached to fine electric wires and sealed hy sulphur. This cap is placed in holes in the sticks of dynamite, and then securely tied hy drawing string tightly around the paper which is raised to admit the cap. In preparing a charge for fuse ignition, the cap is crimped to the end of a piece of mining fuse and this is inserted in the dynamite stick and securely fastened as previously described. These prepared charges are placed in a basket and carried very tenderly to the stumps which have been prepared by the dynamiter's assistant. All the work is han- dled very carefully, for while there is httle danger of an accident unless fire is placed near the explosive, nevertheless extreme caution is used at aU times. It requires a nature serene, calm, and deliberate. CLEARING THE LAND Deep oblique holes were then made with a round crowbar under the stump singled out for execution. This hole should be as nearly horizontal as possible and directly under the stump so that all the explosive force may be expended on the wood and not on the earth between the dynamite and the stump. The earth acts as a cushion and the natural tendency of dynamite to exert force downward is counteracted. As soon as a small strip was blown, the Italians gathering up aU the stumps, roots and fragments, removing any pieces that were loosened but not completely torn out, and, piling them at intervals, imme- diately burned them. This cannot be done when stumps are removed by any other method, for by the digging process the earth must be picked and scraped from them and ultimately the stump hacked in pieces before it will burn. By our method the stimip is burned and the finest kind of unleached wood ashes — 345 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY containing lime to "sweeten" and potash and phosphoric acid to furnish plant food — are spread upon the ground a few hours after the stumps are blown out. These ashes would under other circumstances have to he purchased at a cost from one to two dollars a barrel, and as five barrels at least to the acre are required for good fertiliza- tion, these ashes gave us the first credit upon the books. Following the burners came the manure spreaders; five car loads of manure had been purchased and was dehvered before it was needed. When the manure was spread upon the land (in the proportion of one- half car load to the acre) , the plow started its work smoothly and with none of the strain and jerk on man and beast usual in new land. The soil was turned over with the greatest ease, for the explosions had shivered and torn out even the smallest roots, so the plow ran through the ground much more easily than in sod land. CLEARING THE LAND Our friable, sandy loam, with a light admixture of clay, pulverized and aerated by the explosions, was in market garden condition at once and without the year's loss of crops assured by old methods. When we discovered that our soil reached a depth of three feet, there was great re- joicing. A tooth harrow was next run over the plowed section, and gleaners followed the harrow, picking up the fine roots as they were brought to the surface. As piles of these fine roots grew, they were burned and the ashes immediately spread upon the land. The tooth harrow was run again across the rows, making the condition bet- ter, while the disc harrow following chopped and pulverized the earth into the finest possible condition. Thirty-five and one- half working days after Larry and his gang arrived, rye was drilled into three and one-half acres. The condemned freight cars were placed S47 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY upon skids and drawn to the desired posi- tion over soaped planks. They were set upon old railroad ties to raise them from the ground and give good under ventilation. The north and east sides wiU be filled or banked up with sand which came out of the weU. This wiU keep out the cold winds, and, in the case of the chicken- house car, allow the fowls a shaded place of shelter on hot summer days. The chicken-house car was placed facing the southeast. The western end now has a large glazed sash placed on .it, and two in the southern side. One-half the car was partitioned off for roosting quarters, while the other half serves as a laying and scratching house. This farm wiU, of course, keep only a few chickens for family use. The artesian weU was started in October. The weU was, naturally, a necessity, but there was much to be considered in regard to the method of pxunping. Under ordi- nary circumstances a windmill would do, 348 CLEARING THE LAND but our farm is not to be allowed to be a failure for lack of water in a dry season. During the sununer of 1905 a drought struck the entire eastern section of the United States when vegetation was making a strong, early growth; as a consequence many plants remained practically dormant. In case of drought (and every sxmimer brings one of greater or less duration) water must be on hand, and as a drought usually is accompanied by windless weather, the windmill could not be depended upon. An engine was obviously necessary. Both gasolene and kerosene engines were closely investigated, with the result that a kerosene oil engine was decided upon. An advan- tage of the engine over a windmill is that it will furnish power for cutting wood, grinding grain or lighting the buildings, a two and one-half horse-power engine run- ning twenty-five 16 c. p. lights easily. The rye was turned under green in the spring to furnish humus, the greatest 349 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY and only vital need of this particular spot of virgin soil. The comparison between "ryed" and "unryed" land will be a most interesting one. EXPEirSE ACCOUNT — TOTAL COST OF TEH ACSEB Ten acres of land $23 per acre $230.00 1,348 pounds dynamite at 50c. a pound, and expert. . . . 674.00 Italian labor clearing farm and unloading manure 403.96 ' making and spreading ashes 118.00 ' gathering small roots 6.00 ' cording wood and trimming good trees.. 11.66 ' fixing sleeping quarters 30.00 * carrying water 1% miles 45.00 ' spreading manure ,. . . 13.30 ' moving sweet fern and small herbage... S4.60 *" " laying out plots and measuring for diagrams 4.50 •Native labor 36.00 Five car loads manure and freight 306.58 Seed rye and freight 13.73 *Two condemned freight cars 30.00 •Placing freight cars for chicken house and hay loft. . 16.00 Team, spreading manure 30.00 " plovring 49.00 " harrowing 20.00 •" disc harrowing 8.00 " seeding 7.00 Total 11,948.33 360 *« CLEARING THE LAND Note. — Items with asterisk amounting to $311.76 would, in many cases, be eliminated, and if tlie territory had not been burned over, all, or nearly all, of the expense for manure and handling, amounting to $346.90, could have been saved, for leaf mold would be a substitute. Subtracting these items brings the cost down to $1,389.86. CREDIT ON TEN ACHES 300 barrels of wood ashes at $9 per ton $370.00 (Wood ashes paid for the cost of land and plowing it.) Eighteen cords wood, at $3 per cord 54.00 Two condemned freight cars 18.00 Land usually lies more or less idle with stumps in for six years. Tillable land is for some unknown reason held to be worth $200 an acre. Hence land put into condition immediately for full cultivation gains six years' interest at 6 per cent 600.00 Total $943.00 BASIS OF COMPUTATIOK $150 FEB ACHE (The lowest showing of Long Island gardens) 1st year gain over ^ crop, unstumped land $1,000.00 3nd " " " J « " " 1,000.00 3rd " " " 1/2 " " " '.. 750.00 4th " " " { " " " 500.00 Sth " " " J " " " 187.40 6th year the claim is made by many that approxi- mately the entire acreage is tillable. Interest on amounts gained by fuE crops 171.87 Total credit to modern methods $4,503.37 361 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY Crops now growing are: Asparagus, ber- ries, beans, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, carrots, cucumbers, corn, eggplant, endive, fruit trees, kale, kohl rabi, lettuce, limas, melons, martynias, onions, okra, pars- ley, parsnips, peas, potatoes (sweet and white), pumpkins, radishes, rhubarb, salsify, squash, tomatoes, etc. Marketed strictly choice radishes May 18th, peas June 10th, lettuce June 21st, beans, June 29th, beets, July 8th, carrots, July 10th, cabbage, July 11th. Surely a rapid result, Hemp is hardly worth your growing for itself under ordinary circumstances; the re- turns per acre are not sufficient. But Charles Richard Dodge, in the United States Year- book of the Department of Agriculture for 1895, says that as a weed-kiUer it has prac- tically no equal. In proof of this, a North River farmer stated that thistles heretofore had mastered him in a certain field, but after sowing it with hemp not a thistle survived; and while 363 CLEARING THE LAND ridding the land of this pest, the hemp yielded him nearly sixty dollars an acre, where previously nothing valuable could be produced. As it grows from Minnesota to the Mis- sissippi Delta, its value for this purpose is considerable. But there is a way easier and cheaper of clearing land than by blasting, if we can afford to wait a little; and Mr. George Fayette Thompson, in Bulletin No. 27, Bureau of Animal Industry, tells us how, giving some interesting facts about Angora goats, of which the following is a con- densation: To people taking up raw land, partic- ularly where there is a heavy under- growth to be cleared away, goats of some kind are an invaluable aid. In its brows- ing quahties the common goat is as good as any, but, aside from the clearing of the land, the profit in his keep is very little, though some demand is growing up for 363 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY ■goat's milk for infants and for some fancy cheeses. A much hetter animal from the standpoint of profit, whUe in use as a scavenger, is the Angora goat. Their long, silky hair has been used for centuries in making blankets, lap robes, rugs, carpets, and particularly the "cashmere" shawls, formerly a great luxury in this country. Much of the camel's hair dress goods is in reality made •from the hair of the Angora goat, or mohair, as it is called. Angora goats thrive best in high altitudes with dry climates. They exist in greatest nvunber in the United States in Cahfornia, New Mexico, and Texas. They -have been used successfully in the Willamette vaUey of Oregon to eat the underbrush off "the land, doing for nothing that for which the farmers pay Chinese laborers twenty- five to forty dollars per acre. The cost of Angora goats is so small, five to twelve dollars each for does, with bucks at fifty to one hundred dollars, that even with a small area of land to clear it would pay 354< CLEARING THE LAND to buy a little flock for that purpose. Dr. Shandley, of Iowa, says that two to three goats to the acre is sufficient for cleaning up land, and that in two years the goats wiU eat aU of the underbrush from woodland, such as briers, thistles, scrub oak, sumac, and, in fact, any shrub undergrowth. They need no other food than what they can secure from the woods themselves. Consequently, the income from the sale of mohair is nearly net. The more nearly thoroughbred the goats are, the better the mohair and the higher the price. The meat of the Angora goat is superior to mutton, although if sold in the market under the name of goat meat, it commands only half the price of mutton. As an example of the Angora's utility in cleaning up land, the Country Gentle- man of January 11th, 1900, says: "In 1870 Mr. Landrum exhibited ten head at the Oregon State Fair. In order to dem- onstrate their effectiveness as substitutes 965 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY for grubbing, he left them on three acres of brush. At the end of the second year the land was mellow and ready for the plow." It might be possible to build up a busi- ness in clearing lands for others by means of a herd of Angoras. 366 CHAPTER XIX HOW TO BUILD IF you find an "abandoned farm" on which the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked, as frequently happens, you are all right. Even if the buildings are somewhat dilapidated, you can fix them up for a few dollars. But in buying smaU plots of ground, larger farms have to be broken up. If you buy from ihe resident owner, he may sell you five acres off his larger tract, and keep his house ±o hve in. Certain it is that if a farm of 100 acres is subdivided into twenty five-acre farms, at least nineteen new houses must be built, although sometimes an old barn can be made into a fair residence. If you can do no better, it is possible to jstart by tenting. An outfit large enough 357 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY for a family of six would be about asi follows: 1 wall tent with fly, 10 x 14, for sleeping ,.,,,. $15.00 1 wall tent with fly, 10x14, for dining ..■.,•.... IS-OO 1 old cook stove (to be erected outdoors) •. •. i •. ■ •. S.OO 2 floors, 10x14, at $5 each ..,,,.... lO.OOi $45.oa Brown tents, at least for the steeping^ rooms, are best; they last longer, PiPe cooler,, and do not attract the flies; though indeed we need not have house-flies if wc; feeep the horse manure covered up — ^they- are all bred in that. If the tents are iri the shade,, the cost of the cover or fly caipt be saved in the dining tent; but it is; n;ecessary in the living tent, because wet canvas wiU leak when touched on the inside.. To make the tent warm for the winter, w& must bank up to the edges, of the plat- form with earth and cover th;e whole with another tent of the same sJb^pe, but a foot larger in every dimension.. Thes^Cj are com-- monly used in Montana.. 358 HOW TO BUILD It is to be presumed that no one would; attempt moving in without household uten- sils, which may be as simple or elaborate as you please. If there is a saw-mill in the vicinity, a temporary shack for winter, say 22 x 30 feet, could be built for from , $300 to $500, depending on the inj;erior> finish. Partitions can be made very cheap., by erecting panels covered with c^^ifivas, burlap, old carpet, etc. Such a building, does not need to be plastered, but. can be, made warm enough by an inside, qpy.erings of burlap, heavy builders' paper, o^.. cpm-. position board. Tar paper laid qvej,. solid sheeting makes a roof that wilL l^§t for, two or three years. For such a. shack draw the plans yourself. All- yqi^ rpally. need is a living room, bedroom, ajid kitchen^ A cheap and effective water,, supply can be gotten from a driven well, which in most places costs about one dollar per foot.. Have it where the kitchen is to be, so that the water can be pumped into a, l^rrel or-, 359 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY other tank over the stove. With a good range you can have as good a supply of hot and cold water as you had in the city. If so fortunate as to find a piece of land with a good spring on it, you can lay pipes and draw the water from that. If you can get twelve or fifteen feet fall from the spring to the kitchen, you don't need a pump at all. For a water closet, build a shed four feet wide, six feet long, and eight feet high. Place it over a hole dug in the ground, or, better, make a vault of wood or cement. Scatter in slaked lime and earth occasionally. Clean the vault once or twice a year, mix the contents with earth or litter, and scatter on the garden. A shack can be built of logs which will do for comfort and wiU look dignified. Horace L. Pike, in Country lAfe in America for January, 1906, says: "The lot on which we meant to buUd our log house stood thirty-five feet above the lake. 360 HOW TO BUILD The .problem was how to build a cabin roomy, picturesque, inexpensive, and all on the ground. "The ground dimensions are thirty-two by thirty feet outside. This gives a living room sixteen by fourteen; bedrooms twelve bj'- twelve, twelve by ten, and nine by seven; kitchen eleven by nine; a five by four foot corner for a pantry and refrig- erator; closet four by six, front porch six- teen by six feet six inches, and rear porch five by five — 705 square feet of inside floor space and 130 square feet of porch. "A dozen pine trees stand on the lot, and manoeuvering was required to set a cottage among them without the crime oS cutting one. The front received the salutes of a leaning oak, the life of which was saved by the sacrifice of six inches from the porch eaves, the trunk forming a newel post for the step railing. "We closed the contract immediately for 120 Norway or red pine logs, thirty feet 361 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY, long and eight by ten inches diameter at butts, jSfty cents each, delivered. The price was low — one or two dollars their Hke should have brought. We used, however, only eighty-one logs; forty thirty- foot, four- teen eighteen-foot, thirteen sixteen-foot, and fourteen fourteen-foot. "Work was begun on April 22nd. Two days sufficed for the owner and one man to clear and level the ground, dig post- holes, set posts and square the foundation. The soil was light sand with a clay hard- pan three feet down. "Twenty-seven days each were put in by two men from start to finish, with assistance rendered by the owner. There were seven days by the mason, eight by carpenters, and fourteen and one-half by other labor. On June 4th the cabin was ready for occupancy, and the family moved in. [The detailed account of labor, cost, and the specifications for materials is in Appendix E.] 362 HOW TO BUILD "Making allowances for increased cost of logs and diflferences in any of the material cost, this cabin can be duplicated for less than $600 by anyone who has the ground, a few tools, and some building ability. It is compact, convenient, and more roomy than a superficial glance reveals, and it can be occupied (slight care is required) from April to November with only the kitchen stove and the fireplace supplying the heat. The same plan can be used for an all- frame structure, perhaps at less cost. It could be sheathed and slab-covered in a lo- caUty where slabs, edged to six or eight inches wide, could be had; or slabs could be used perpendicularly in the gable ends and on the outside of the rear extension." We must not overlook the differences in cost of lumber and labor in different places, sometimes more than doubling. Nor the fact that different contractors will vary often twenty-five per cent, in their bids. THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY The owner and occupant writes: "At Berkeley Heights, N. J., on the D. L. & W. RaUroad, twenty-five nules from New York, is a bungalow named "Hickory" because it is shaded by a large hickory tree. "In floor dimensions it is 22x30, with a kitchen 12 x 14, and faces to the south. The sills rest on concrete blocks. The foundations are over three feet in depth, whUe the open fireplace foundation is six feet deepi upon which the flue is built of concrete blocks. The veranda is eight feet in width, and runs the entire length, and four large cedar posts support the front of the shingle roof. In the center of the veranda is a double door with windows on either side opening into one large room which is divided at the end by a detachable paneled screen and by portieres. The end is ceUed and forms a loft. "The kitchen has running hot and cold water, range, and tubs. $6i HOW TO BUILD ? I" t >» ^ JS O O O M*^ « g S3 < ^ 5 E? B> s -^a g Ell O H U M M ■*! 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