CHAPTER XXXIII.—A FEW PRACTICAL “DON’TS” 292-298

Deep plowing 292 Department of Agriculture 294 Farmer’s life, the 292 Feed the soil 295 Making seeds comfortable 292, 293 Successful farmers 296, 297 Tools and their care 295

APPENDIX I. 299-300 Island of Guernsey products 299

APPENDIX II. 301-306 French Gardening, etc. 301

APPENDIX III. 307-317 Maylands Gardening Customs 307

APPENDIX IV. 318-321 Agricultural Courses 318

PREFACE.

An intensive farm is only an enlarged garden patch.

This book is not intended as a scientific book on agriculture; there are many such books which are out of the depths of everyone except professors and professionals. In a nice experiment station, nice experiments and scientific calculations are excellent; but I want to give the plain man or woman who has a back yard or back lot, out of which he might make part of a living or more than a living, a book that will show how to do it.

I want to help the man or woman who has to do the cultivation at odd times and who finds it hard to get the time for the work, even though this work enables him to do far more work of other kinds. I have had all sorts of experience with gardening, in spite of telegrams and people who want “just five minutes for some important business.” So if you have the same trouble getting the time, do not let that discourage you. We can get health, happiness and some profit in spite of the interruptions.

It won’t be enough simply to read this book; that won’t make you a gardener; but if you study it while you are working on the land and use your judgment and common sense, in one season you will be able to teach most of those whom you now have to hire as expert Gardeners at Three Dollars a Day.

If anybody sneers at your gardening as being “book farming,” let him sneer; a fool never understands what a wise man is doing: if he did, he would do it himself. You have here the plain, simple, practical facts without scientific terms—just the ordinary garden talk. There are plenty of things you will not find in this book. You won’t find analyses of fertilizers, nor how to grow “pomatoes,” or anything else that won’t sell when you have grown it. Nor will you find fairy stories of poultry profits that make the goose’s golden eggs look like thirty cents. There is a use for all that sort of thing—it arouses interest and stimulates the imagination. But you will probably be content to be a good, practical, every-day gardener who can make things grow and knows what to do with them after they have grown.

Some critics, who will not read this book, will sagely remark that such books as Mr. Hall’s are dangerous, because they induce inexperienced persons to sell out and lose their money trying to get Liberty on Three Acres or a Living from a Little Land. To repeat for such people my cautions and advice to learn navigation before buying your ship, is to blow against the North wind.

If you have skipped the foregoing, just skip again, back to it. You will see that I have promised to use no scientific terms. This book will be read by more plain people than by scientists, and so I have aimed to talk just as I would if I were trying to teach you how to raise lettuce—or rather trying to teach you to learn for yourself how to raise lettuce. For we cannot teach anyone anything, we can only give him the opportunity of learning. So if the experimental agriculturist thinks that a good deal has been left out that might have been put in, I hope he will remember that I have had to pick from a measureless field, and by trying to crowd in too much I might easily confuse the less experienced and make it hard for him to learn.

And yet no one need think that by reading a book or any number of books he can be made a gardener. That is done by work of head and hands on the soil; and the best preparation for a really scientific use of your own land, is to hire yourself out for a while to a market gardener and get the practical, every-day experience.

You might as well expect to learn writing without using a pen as gardening without using a bit of land. You will make some mistakes and lose some crops, but I can show you how to profit by mistakes and to lose very little by losses.

If you don’t understand the directions, that is my fault: I should be able to make it clear to everyone. So just write me (a pencil and a postal card will do) and I will tell you what you want to know, if I know it myself or can find out.

BOLTON HALL.

56 PINE ST., NEW YORK CITY.

INTRODUCTION.

A farm is the only proper home. Working for yourself is the only true independence. Labor on the land in the open gives health and long life. Raise a living and sell the surplus. Work all the time, but don’t overwork. Make faces at the cynic who says the farmer and his wife and children work fifteen hours a day and then starve. It isn’t so. Work alone is not farming; you must manage. Farming needs intelligence and care, nothing more so. Everywhere you see good farm-homes and poor ones; the difference is in the farmer. What the good farmers do, all can do.

In this book, the author tells how to lay out the land, how to prepare and plant and harvest, and how to make life joyous. He has boiled down the experience of himself and his friends and the information contained in bulletins and books and catalogs. A cobbler or clerk or typo, can take this book and with his tennis-made muscle and his trade accuracy can make a bare living the first year, a good living the second, and start a bank account the third. I know it because I helped do it in my youth and I have seen it done all my life.

One of the obstacles in the way of town families going to the country is separation from friends and going among strangers. Another is the conscious ignorance of the work and a sense of helplessness. These are real and valid difficulties. They are equivalent to the difficulties besetting a German or Norwegian farmer coming alone into an American community in a new state. The hundreds of thousands of European farmers who came to the states every year from the forties to the end of the eighties overcame this difficulty by organizing colonies of friends and neighbors and settling in one spot. They thus had society and they had the benefit of their best leaders. Then their old friends kept coming in smaller squads. This is the way for town people to do. Find six or ten or a dozen and go together. Even if all are not relatives or friends they may be of the same class or trade.

To any such colony I will furnish the money to pay for all the land they need and let them begin paying the cost price of it at the end of five years and finish in ten, with 4 per cent. interest. They may pick the tract and bargain for the price. Upon their showing that the agreed number are ready to go and are able to make the improvements and provide the working equipment, I will advance the money to pay for the land. They can divide it up to suit themselves.

I have furnished farms already plowed, fenced and housed, and horse and cow free of charge. But these empty-handed folk, who have saved nothing out of their former occupation, lack the qualities to manage for themselves and to succeed at farming. They are too helpless and dependent. Their best plan is to hire out in the country until they learn farm work and life, then rent a piece of land, and then buy.

How much land shall each one have, how much can he properly cultivate? That depends on what he raises, and this governs his location and the price of the land. With present methods, he will need 20 acres if he keeps a dairy of ten cows; or, 10 acres if he raises vegetables, small fruit, poultry and milk; or, four acres is enough for truck and a horse and cow, while one acre is enough if he raises only celery, asparagus or tomatoes. The price of land is influenced by social conditions, speculation, proximity to and quality of market and agricultural adaptability, all the way from $5.00 an acre to $250.00. There is plenty of it not above the value of the public and private improvements. It is useless to buy a farm of 160 acres for one family. They cannot work it, it is a dead expense, they would be lonesome, would starve and quit. But a colony, settling as neighbors on well-chosen land for which they pay only when they have had time to earn it, will have every opportunity to succeed.

Only in rare cases would I advise town dwellers to go singly to the country; they are disqualified by their social and industrial habits. A colony of friends or Co-operative Associations overcome the difficulties and do in fact assure success to any one possessed of industry and frugality.

By intensive cultivation is meant, not any particular kind of product, but farming the land thoroughly, getting the best yield and the best quality out of every acre, the best seeds and the best breeds and the best way of disposing of the crop when you get it. The farm or garden may be in the vegetable or small fruit or corn and hay or dairying section. In either case, you can cultivate it intensively, which is thoroughly.

The book will tell you in A, B, C style how to farm. I am asked to tell what to do with the crop after you have raised it, how to buy what you don’t raise, and how to make social substitutes for the city crowds and sights.

_Associate!_ _Co-operate!_

You may not know it, but the world is turning from private trade to co-operation at a fast rate. In some countries most of the farmers do all their business by co-operation.

Co-operation is simple and sure and safe, when enough people want it and are shown how.

I have practiced co-operation in my business for twenty-three years. I have been intimate with it the world over for twenty-five years. I have seen it grow and grow until it numbers its millions of workers in some countries, and is doubling every five years in many countries and states. Though I am a manufacturer, my chief occupation is to preach and teach co-operation to farmers—at my own expense.

Co-operative creameries have changed Minnesota from a declining wheat state to a rich dairy state. Co-operation has saved the California orange grower from bankruptcy and made him prosperous; it has raised Denmark’s exports of butter, eggs and bacon from eighteen to eighty millions a year, and it has almost cut off our supply of policemen and politicians from Ireland, because over a thousand co-operative associations have grown up there in twenty years.

After you have undertaken what this book tells you all about, you want to count on forming co-operative associations with your neighbors to do all the business that you have. You raise your own crop; but pack it, ship it and sell it through your association. You use bought goods, but buy them all through the association. That gives you a saving in expenses, a saving in price, and a better quality. What is still more, it makes better neighbors of you, and rids you entirely of the demoralizing tricks of the trade, and prevents you figuring how to get the best trade out of the other fellow. You are yourself “the other fellow.” In the co-operative way, your interest lies in producing the best stuff, which will gradually improve your motives. Co-operation fits any sort of business, if there is enough of it.

One hundred and fifty cows are needed to start a cheese factory, 250 for a milk shipping association, 500 for a butter creamery; fewer than these do not pay.

For co-operation in raising vegetables and small fruits, no fixed quantity of product is required; two or more persons working together is better than each for himself.

Talk it up as neighbors and then hold a meeting. Let all who want to join, sign an agreement to deliver all their truck to the association and pay a membership fee of $5.00 or over. Each member should have an equal voice regardless of his acreage. Organize, either as a corporation or a limited partnership. Elect the best qualified men to be officers, and then give them unqualified support. Select a manager and see to the marketing arrangements. If the quantity raised is large enough, it is best to have your own receiving and selling agent in the principal market. Every member must make a legal contract with the association to submit to its rules about condition, packing and delivering, to apply to his entire crop. Good quality, reliable packing and regular supply are essential to good prices.

The manager or inspector must have full authority. Each member’s delivery is graded, weighed, measured or counted and accurately recorded. Once a month the account from each grade is made up, and the proceeds, after paying expenses, are paid over.

The manager should be an experienced trucker, competent to instruct and advise about the work of planting, growing and gathering. The growers meet each other at the station, and compare notes. They all learn what is known by the most expert among them. They can arrange to have one man gather up the crops from several places and make one load to the packing-house, taking turn about in this service. Small or poor growers may be admitted with a nominal payment, even as low as 25 cents, the remainder to be paid by a 5 per cent. deduction from his proceeds.

The association and management can also fill the assembled orders of members for fertilizer, seed, implements and packing material, at wholesale prices. In time you will make your own boxes, erect a cannery for the surplus and even buy your own groceries co-operatively.

You can form a credit society with unlimited liability, to receive on deposit the members’ surplus and borrow from the city. That money is lent, for productive uses only, to members of known ability and honesty, who give two similar members as security.

When you get safely started in one kind of co-operative association, you will easily go to the next, as the Danes and the Irish have done.

ST. LOUIS, MO.

N. O. NELSON.