The Project Gutenberg eBook ofTen Acres EnoughThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Ten Acres EnoughAuthor: Edmund MorrisRelease date: April 20, 2015 [eBook #48753]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Frank van Drogen, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisbook was produced from scanned images of public domainmaterial from the Google Print project.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEN ACRES ENOUGH ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Ten Acres EnoughAuthor: Edmund MorrisRelease date: April 20, 2015 [eBook #48753]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Frank van Drogen, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisbook was produced from scanned images of public domainmaterial from the Google Print project.)
Title: Ten Acres Enough
Author: Edmund Morris
Author: Edmund Morris
Release date: April 20, 2015 [eBook #48753]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Frank van Drogen, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisbook was produced from scanned images of public domainmaterial from the Google Print project.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEN ACRES ENOUGH ***
A PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE,SHOWINGHOW A VERY SMALL FARM MAY BE MADE TOKEEP A VERY LARGE FAMILY.WITHExtensive and Profitable ExperienceINTHE CULTIVATION OF THE SMALLER FRUITS.EIGHTH EDITION.NEW YORK:PUBLISHED BY JAMES MILLER,(SUCCESSOR TO C. S. FRANCIS & CO.,)522 B R O A D W A Y.MDCCCLXVI.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864,ByJAMES MILLER,In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States forthe Southern District of New York.
THEman who feeds his cattle on a thousand hills may possibly see the title of this little volume paraded through the newspapers; but the chances are that he will never think it worth while to look into the volume itself. The owner of a hundred acres will scarcely step out of his way to purchase or to borrow it, while the lord of every smaller farm will be sure it is not intended for him. Few persons belonging to these several classes have been educated to believe Ten Acres Enough. Born to greater ambition, they have aimed higher and grasped at more, sometimes wisely, sometimes not. Many of these are now owning or cultivating more land than their heads or purses enable them to manage properly. Had their ambition been moderate, and their ideas more practical, their labor would be better rewarded, and this book, without doubt, would have found more readers.
The mistaken ambition for owning twice as much land as one can thoroughly manure or profitably cultivate, is the great agricultural sin of this country. Those who commit it, by beginning wrong, too frequently continue wrong. Owning many acres is thesole idea. High cultivation of a small tract, is one of which they have little knowledge. Too many in these several classes think they know enough. They measure a man’s knowledge by the number of his acres. Hence, in their eyes the owner of a plot so humble as mine must know so little as to be unable to teach them any thing new.
Happily, it is not for these that I write, and hence it would be unreasonable to expect them to become readers. I write more particularly for those who have not been brought up as farmers—for that numerous body of patient toilers in city, town, and village, who, like myself, have struggled on from year to year, anxious to break away from the bondage of the desk, the counter, or the workshop, to realize in the country even a moderate income, so that it be a sure one. Many such are constantly looking round in this direction for something which, with less mental toil and anxiety, will provide a maintenance for a growing family, and afford a refuge for advancing age—some safe and quiet harbor, sheltered from the constantly recurring monetary and political convulsions which in this country so suddenly reduce men to poverty. But these inquirers find no experienced pioneers to lead the way, and they turn back upon themselves, too fearful to go forward alone. Books of personal experience like this are rare. This is written for the information of the class referred to,for men not only willing, but anxious to learn. Once in the same predicament myself, I know their longings, their deficiencies, and the steps they ought to take. Hence, in seeking to make myself fully understood, some may think that I have been unnecessarily minute. But in setting forth my own crudities, I do but save others from repeating them. Yet with all this amplification, my little contribution will occasion no crowding even upon a book-shelf which may be already filled.
I am too new a farmer to be the originator of all the ideas which are here set forth. Some, which seemed to be appropriate to the topic in hand, have been incorporated with the argument as it progressed; while in some instances, even the language of writers, whose names were unknown to me, has also been adopted.
MYlife, up to the age of forty, had been spent in my native city of Philadelphia. Like thousands of others before me, I began the world without a dollar, and with a very few friends in a condition to assist me. Having saved a few hundred dollars by dint of close application to business, and avoiding taverns, oyster-houses, theatres, and fashionable tailors, I married and went into business the same year. These two contemporaneous drafts upon my little capital proving heavier than I expected, they soon used it up, leaving me thereafter greatly straitened for means. It is true my business kept me, but as it was constantly expanding, and was of such a nature that a large proportion of my annual gain was necessarily invested in tools, fixtures, and machinery, I was nearly always short of ready cash to carry on my operations with comfort. At certain times, also, it ceased to be profitable. The crisis of 1837 nearly ruined me, and I was kept struggling along duringthe five succeeding years of hard times, until the revival of 1842 came round. Previous to this crisis, necessity had driven me to the banks for discounts, one of the sore evils of doing business upon insufficient capital. As is always the case with these institutions, they compelled me to return the borrowed money at the very time it was least convenient for me to do so—they needed it as urgently as myself. But to refund them I was compelled to borrow elsewhere, and that too at excessive rates of interest, thus increasing the burden while laboring to shake it off.
Thousands have gone through the same unhappy experience, and been crushed by the load. Such can anticipate my trials and privations. Yet I was not insolvent. My property had cost me far more than I owed, yet if offered for sale at a time when the whole community seemed to want money only, no one could have been found to give cost. I could not use it as the basis of a loan, neither could I part with it without abandoning my business. Hence I struggled on through that exhausting crisis, haunted by perpetual fears of being dishonored at bank,—lying down at night, not to peaceful slumber, but to dream of fresh expedients to preserve my credit for to-morrow. I have sometimes thought that the pecuniary cares of that struggle were severe enough to have shortened my life, had they been much longer protracted.
Besides the mental anxieties they occasioned, they compelled a pinching economy in my family. But in this latter effort I discovered my wife to be a jewel of priceless value, coming up heroically to thetask, and relieving me of a world of care. Without her aid, her skill, her management, her uncomplaining cheerfulness, her sympathy in struggles so inadequately rewarded as mine were, I should have sunk into utter bankruptcy. Her economy was not the mean, penny-wise, pound foolish policy which many mistake for true economy. It was the art of calculation joined to the habit of order, and the power of proportioning our wishes to the means of gratifying them. The little pilfering temper of a wife is despicable and odious to every man of sense; but there is a judicious, graceful economy, which has no connection with an avaricious temper, and which, as it depends upon the understanding, can be expected only from cultivated minds. Women who have been well educated, far from despising domestic duties, will hold them in high respect, because they will see that the whole happiness of life is made up of the happiness of each particular day and hour, and that much of the enjoyment of these must depend upon the punctual practice of virtues which are more valuable than splendid.
If I survived that crisis, it was owing to my wife’s admirable management of my household expenses. She saw that our embarrassment was due to no imprudence or neglect of mine. She thus consented to severe privations, uttering no complaint, hinting no reproach, never disheartened, and so rarely out of humor that she never failed to welcome my return with a smile.
But in this country one convulsion follows another with disheartening frequency. I lived through thatof 1837, paid my debts, and had managed to save some money. My wife’s system of economy had been so long adhered to, that in the end it became to some extent habitual to her, and she still continued to practise great frugality. I became insensibly accustomed to it myself. Children were multiplying around us, and we thought the skies had brightened for all future time. When in difficulty, we had often debated the propriety of quitting the city and its terrible business trials, and settling on a few acres in the country, where we could raise our own food, and spend the remainder of our days in cultivating ground which would be sure to yield us at least a respectable subsistence. We had no longing for excessive wealth: a mere competency, though earned by daily toil, so that it was reasonably sure, and free from the drag of continued indebtedness to others, was all we coveted.
I had always loved the country, but my wife preferred the city. I could take no step but such as would be likely to promote her happiness. So long as times continued fair, we ceased to canvass the propriety of a removal. We had children to educate, and to her the city seemed the best and most convenient place for qualifying them for future usefulness. Then, most of our relations resided near us. Our habits were eminently social. We had made numerous friends, and among our neighbors there had turned up many valuable families. We felt even the thought of breaking away from all these cordial ties to be a trying one. But the refuge of a removal to the country had taken strong hold of my mind.
Indeed, it may be said that I was born with a passion for living on a farm. It was fixed and strengthened by my long experience of the business vicissitudes of city life. For many years I had been a constant subscriber for several agricultural journals, whose contents I read as carefully as I did those of the daily papers. My wife also, being a great reader, came in time to study them almost as attentively. Every thing I saw in them only tended to confirm my longing for the country, while they gave definite views of what kind of farming I was fit for. In fact they educated me for the position before I assumed it. I am sure they exercised a powerful influence in removing most of my wife’s objections to living in the country. I studied their contents as carefully as did the writers who prepared them. I watched the reports of crops, of experiments, and of profits. The leading idea in my mind was this—that a man of ordinary industry and intelligence, by choosing a proper location within hourly reach of a great city market, could so cultivate a few acres as to insure a maintenance for his family, free from the ruinous vibrations of trade or commerce in the metropolis. All my reading served to convince me of its soundness. I did not assume that he could get rich on the few acres which I ever expected to own; but I felt assured that he could place himself above want. I knew that his peace of mind would be sure. With me this was dearer than all. My reading had satisfied me that such a man would find Ten Acres Enough, and these I could certainly command.
As I did not contemplate undertaking the management of a large grain farm, so my studies did not run in that direction. Yet I read every thing that came before me in relation to such, and not without profit. But I graduated my views to my means, and so noted with the utmost care the experiences of the small cultivators who farmed five to ten acres thoroughly. I noted their failures as watchfully as their successes, knowing that the former were to be avoided, as the latter were to be imitated. As opportunity offered, I made repeated excursions, year after year, in every direction around Philadelphia, visiting the small farmers or truckers who supplied the city market with fruit and vegetables, examining, inquiring, and treasuring up all that I saw and heard. The fund of knowledge thus acquired was not only prodigious, but it has been of lasting value to me in my subsequent operations. I found multitudes of truckers who were raising large families on five acres of ground, while others, owning only thirty acres, had become rich.
On most of these numerous excursions I was careful to have my wife with me. I wanted her to see and hear for herself, and by convincing her judgment, to overcome her evidently diminishing reluctance to leaving the city. My uniform consideration for her comfort at last secured the object I had in view. She saw so many homes in which a quiet abundance was found, so many contented men and women, so many robust and bouncing children, that long before I was ready to leave the city, she was quite impatient to be gone.
THEREwas not a particle of romance in my aspirations for a farm, neither had I formed a single visionary theory which was there to be tested. My notions were all sober and prosaic. I had struggled all my life for dollars, because abundance of them produces pecuniary comfort: and the change to country life was to be, in reality, a mere continuation of the struggle, but lightened by the assurance that if the dollars thus to be acquired were fewer in number, the certainty of earning enough of them was likely to be greater. Crops might fail under skies at one time too watery, at another too brassy, but no such disaster could equal those to which commercial pursuits are uninterruptedly exposed. They have brassy skies above them as well as farmers. For nearly twenty years I had been hampered with having notes of my own or of other parties to pay; but of all the farmers I had visited, only one had ever given a note, and he had made a vow never to give another. My wife was shrewd enough to observe and remark on this fact at the time, it was so different from my own experience. She admitted there must be some satisfaction in carrying on a business which did not require the giving of notes.
Looking at the matter of removal to the countryin a practical light, I found that in the city I was paying three hundred dollars per annum rent for a dwelling-house. It was the interest of five thousand dollars; yet it afforded nothing but a shelter for my family. I might continue to pay that rent for fifty years, without, at the end of that time, having acquired the ownership of either a stone upon the chimney, or a shingle in the roof. If the house rose in value, the rise would be to the owner’s benefit, not to mine. It would really be injurious to me, as the rise would lead him to demand an increase of his rent. But put the value of the house into a farm, or even the half of it—the farm would have a dwelling-house upon it, in which my family would find as good a shelter, while the land, if cultivated as industriously as I had always cultivated business, would belie the flood of evidence I had been studying for many years, if it failed to yield to my efforts the returns which it was manifestly returning to others. We could live contentedly on a thousand dollars a year, and here we should have no landlord to pay. My wife, in pinching times, has financiered us through the year on several hundred less. I confess to having lived as well on the diminished rations as I wanted to. Indeed, until one tries it for himself, it is incredible what dignity there is in an old hat, what virtue in a time-worn coat, and how savory the dinner-table can be made without sirloin steaks or cranberry tarts.
Thus, let it be remembered, my views and aspirations had no tinge of extravagance. My rule was moderation. The tortures of a city struggle without capital, had sobered me down to being contentedwith a bare competency. I might fail in some particulars at the outset, from ignorance, but I was in the prime of life, strong, active, industrious, and tractable, and what I did not know I could soon learn from others, for farmers have no secrets. Then I had seen too much of the uncertainty of banks and stocks, and ledger accounts, and promissory notes, to be willing to invest any thing in either as a permanency. At best they are fluctuating and uncertain, up to-day and down to-morrow. My great preference had always been for land.
In looking around among my wide circle of city acquaintances, especially among the older families, I could not fail to notice that most of them had grown rich by the ownership of land. More than once had I seen the values of all city property, improved and unimproved, apparently disappear;—lots without purchasers, and houses without tenants, the community so poor and panic-stricken that real estate became the merest drug. Yesterday the collapse was caused by the destruction of the National Bank; to-day it is the Tariff. Sheriffs played havoc with houses and lands incumbered by mortgages, and lawyers fattened on the rich harvest of fees inaugurated by a Bankrupt Law. But those who, undismayed by the wreck around them, courageously held on to land, came through in safety. The storm, having run its course and exhausted its wrath, gave place to skies commercially serene, and real estate swung back with an irrepressible momentum to its former value, only to keep on advancing to one even greater.
I became convinced that safety lay in the ownership of land. In all my inquiries both before leaving the city, as well as since, I rarely heard of a farmer becoming insolvent. When I did, and was careful to ascertain the cause, it turned out that he had either begun in debt, and was thus hampered at the beginning, or had made bad bargains in speculations outside of his calling, or wasted his means in riotous living, or had in some way utterly neglected his business. If not made rich by heavy crops, I could find none who had been made poor by bad ones.
The reader may look back over every monetary convulsion he may be able to remember, and he will find that in all of them the agricultural community came through with less disaster than any other interest. Wheat grows and corn ripens though all the banks in the world may break, for seed-time and harvest is one of the divine promises to man, never to be broken, because of its divine origin. They grew and ripened before banks were invented, and will continue to do so when banks and railroad bonds shall have become obsolete.
Moreover, the earthly fund for whose acquisition we are all striving, we naturally desire to make a permanent one. As we have worked for it, so we trust that it will work for us and our children. Its value, whatever that may be, depends on its perpetuity—the continuance of its existence. A man seeks to earn what will support and serve not only himself, but his posterity. He would naturally desire to have the estate descend to children and grandchildren.This is one great object of his toil. What, then, is the safest fund in which to invest, in this country? What is the only fund which the experience of the last fifty years has shown, with very few exceptions, would be absolutely safe as a provision for heirs? How many men, within that period, assuming to act as trustees for estates, have kept the trust fund invested in stocks, and when distributing the principal among the heirs, have found that most of it had vanished! Under corporate insolvency it had melted into air. No prudent man, accepting such a trust, and guaranteeing its integrity, would invest the fund in stocks.
Our country is filled with pecuniary wrecks from causes like this. Thousands trust themselves during their lifetime, to manage this description of property, confident of their caution and sagacity. With close watching and good luck, they may be equal to the task; but the question still occurs as to the probable duration of such a fund in families. What is its safety when invested in the current stocks of the country? and next, what is its safety in the hands of heirs? There are no statistics showing the probable continuance of estates in land in families, and of estates composed of personal property, such as stocks. But every bank cashier will testify to one remarkable fact—that an heir no sooner inherits stock in the bank than the first thing he generally does is to sell and transfer it, and that such sale is most frequently the first notice given of the holder’s death.
This preference for investment in real estate will doubtless be objected to by the young and dashingbusiness man. But lands, or a fund secured by real estate, is unquestionably not only the highest security, but in the hands of heirs it is the only one likely to survive a single generation. Hence the wisdom of the common law, which neither permits the guardian to sell the lands of his ward, nor even the court, in its discretion, to grant authority for their sale, except upon sufficient grounds shown,—as a necessity for raising a fund for the support and education of the ward. Even a lord chancellor can only touch so sacred a fund for this or similar reasons. The common law is wise on this subject, as on most others. It is thus the experience and observation of mankind that such a fund is the safest, and hence the provisions of the law.
Those, therefore, who acquire personal property, acquire only what will last about a generation, longer or shorter. Such property is quickly converted into money—it perishes and is gone. But land is hedged round with numerous guards which protect it from hasty spoliation. It is not so easily transferred; it is not so secretly transferred; the law enjoins deliberate formalities before it can be alienated, and often the consent of various parties is necessary. When all other guards give way, early memories of parental attachment to these ancestral acres, or tender reminiscences of childhood, will come in to stay the spoliation of the homestead, and make even the prodigal pause before giving up this portion of his inheritance.
Throughout Europe a passion to become the owner of land is universal, while the difficulty of gratifying it is infinitely greater than with us. It is there enormouslydear; here it is absurdly cheap. It is from this universal passion that the vast annual immigration to this country derives its mighty impulse. As it reaches our shores it spreads itself over the country in search of cheap land. Many of the most flourishing Western States have been built up by the astonishing influx of immigrants. In England, every landowner is prompt to secure every freehold near him, be it large or small, as it comes into market. Hence the number of freeholders in that country is annually diminishing by this process of absorption. This European passion for acquiring land is strangely contrasted with the American passion for parting with it.
THElast thirty years have been prolific of great pecuniary convulsions. I need not recapitulate them here, as too many of them are yet dark spots on the memory of some who will read this. Their frequency, as well as their recurrence at shorter intervals than at the beginning of the century, are among their most remarkable features, baffling the calculations of older heads, and confounding those of younger ones. As the century advanced, these convulsions increased in number and violence. The whole business horizon seemed full of coming storms, which burst successively with desolating severity, not only on merchants and manufacturers, but on others who had long before retired from business. No one could foresee this state of things. I will not stop to argue causes, but confine myself to facts which none will care to contradict.
These disasters made beggars of thousands in every branch of business, and spread discouragement over every community. I passed through several of them, striving and struggling, and oppressed beyond all power of description. How many more the community was to encounter I did not know; but I conceived it the part of prudence to place myself beyondthe circle of their influence before I also had been prostrated.
In spite of the losses thus encountered, I had been saving something annually for several years, when the stricture of 1854 came on, premonitory of the tremendous crash of 1857. Most unfortunately for my comfort, that stricture seemed to fall with peculiar severity on a class of dealers largely indebted to me. Many of them became embarrassed, and failed to pay me at the time, while to this day some of them are still my debtors. My old experiences of raising money revived, and to some extent I was compelled to go through the humiliations of similar periods. But the stricture was of brief duration, and I closed the year in far better condition than I had anticipated.
But the trials of that incipient crisis determined me to abandon the city. I found that by realizing all I then possessed, I could command means enough to purchase ten to twenty acres, and I had grown nervous and apprehensive of the future. While possessed of a little, I resolved to make that little sure by investing it in land. I had worked for the landlord long enough. My excellent wife was now entirely willing to make the change, and our six children clapped their hands with joy when they heard that “father was going to live in the country.”
I had long determined in my mind what sort of farming was likely to prove profitable enough to keep us with comfort, and that was the raising of small fruits for the city markets. My attention had always been particularly directed to the berries. Some strawberries I had raised in my city gardenwith prodigious success. My friends, when they heard of my project, expressed fears that the market would soon be glutted, not exactly by the crops which I was to raise, but they could not exactly answer how. They confessed that they were extremely fond of berries, and that at no time in the season could they afford to eat enough; a confession which seemed to explode all apprehension of the market being overstocked.
But my wife and myself had both examined the hucksters who called at the door with small fruits, as to the monstrous prices they demanded, and had begged them, if ever a glut occurred, that they would call and let us know. But none had ever called with such information. It was the same thing with those who occupied stalls in the various city markets. They rarely had a surplus left unsold, and their prices were always high. A glut of fruit was a thing almost unknown to them. It was a safe presumption that the market would not be depressed by the quantity that I might raise.
But here let me say something by way of parenthesis, touching this common idea of the danger of overstocking the fruit-market of the great cities. It is a curious fact that this idea is entertained only by those who are not fruit-growers. The latter never harbored it. Their whole experience runs the other way, they know it to be a gross absurdity. Yet somehow, the question of a glut has always been debated. Twenty years ago the nurserymen were advised to close up their sales and abandon the business, as they would soon have no customers for trees—everybody was supplied. But trees have continued to be planted from that day to this, and where hundreds were sold twenty years ago, thousands are disposed of now. Old-established nurseries have been trebled in size, while countless new ones have been planted. The nursery business has grown to a magnitude truly gigantic, because the market for fruit has been annually growing larger, and no business enlarges itself unless it is proved to be profitable.
The market cannot be glutted with good fruit. The multiplication of mouths to consume it is far more rapid than the increase of any supply that growers can effect. Within ten years the masses have had a slight taste of choice fruits, and but little more. Indulgence has only served to whet their appetites. The more of them there is offered in the market, the more will there be consumed. Every huckster in her shamble, every vender of peanuts in the street, will testify to this. The modern art of semi-cookery for fruit, and of preserving it in cans and jars, has made sale for enormous quantities of those choicer kinds which return the highest profit to the grower. It is in the grain-market that panic often rages, but never in the fruit-market. If it ever enters the latter, the struggle is to obtain the fruit, not to get rid of it.
The proper choice of a location was now to be the great question of my future success. I had determined on giving my attention to the raising of the smaller fruits for the great markets of New York and Philadelphia. I must therefore be somewhere on ornear the railroad between those cities, and as near as possible to a station. The soil of Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, was too heavy for some of the lighter fruits. New Jersey, with its admirable sandy loam light, warm, and of surprisingly easy tillage, was proverbially adapted for the growth of all market produce, whether fruit or vegetable, and was at the same time a week or two earlier. Land was far cheaper, there was no State debt, taxes were merely nominal, and an acre that could be bought for thirty dollars could be made four times as productive as an acre of the best wheat land in Pennsylvania. Such results are regularly realized by hundreds of Jerseymen from year to year.
It was also of easy access from the city for manure-boats. Every town within the range of my wants was well supplied with churches, schools, and stores, together with an intelligent and moral population. I should be surrounded by desirable neighbors, while an hour’s ride by steamboat or railroad would place me, many times daily, among all my ancient friends in the city. We should by no means become hermits. I knew the country so well from my numerous visits among the fruit-growers, when in search of information, as to anticipate but little difficulty in finding the proper location.
By the mere accident of a slight revival in business in the early part of 1855, a party came along who was thus induced to purchase my stock and machinery. Luckily, he was able to pay down the whole amount in cash. I received what I considered at the time an excellent price; but when I came tosettle up my accounts and pay what I owed, I found, to my extreme disappointment, that but a little over two thousand dollars remained.
This sum was the net gain of many years of most laborious toil. Was it possible for farming to be a worse business than this? I had made ten times as much, but my losses had been terrible. This, with my personal credit, was all the surplus I had saved. I remember now, that when thus discovering myself to be worth so little, I half regretted having given up my business for what then appeared to me so inadequate a sum. When selling, I was jubilant and thankful—when settled up, I was full of regrets. I ought to have had more. So difficult is it for the human mind to be satisfied with that which is really best.
But I little knew what the future was to bring forth, and how soon my want of thankfulness was to be changed into the profoundest conviction that I had providentially escaped from total ruin, and come out comparatively rich. I had made myself snug upon my little farm when the tornado of 1857 toppled my former establishment into utter ruin. My successor was made a bankrupt, and his business was destroyed, leaving him overwhelmed with debt. He had lost all, while I had saved all. Had I not sold when I did, and secured what the sale yielded me, I too should have been among the wrecks of that terrific visitation.
But I heard its warring in the quiet of my little farm-house, where it brought me neither anxiety nor loss. My position was like that of one sitting peacefullyby his wintry fireside, gazing on the thick storm without, and listening to the patter of the snow-flakes as the tempest drove them angrily against the window-pane, while all within was calm and genial. Instead of regrets for what I had failed to grasp, my heart overflowed with thankfulness for the comparative abundance that remained to me. My peace of mind was perfect. The unspeakable satisfaction was felt of being out of business, out of debt, out of danger—not rich, but possessed of enough. The thoughtful reader may well believe that subsequent disturbances, rebellion, war, and even a more wide-spread bankruptcy—from all which my humble position made me secure—have only served to intensify my gratitude to that Divine Providence which so mercifully shaped my ways.
ASalready stated, I had in round numbers a clear two thousand dollars, with which to buy and stock a farm, and keep my family while my first crops were growing. As I was entirely free from debt, so I determined to avoid it in the future. Debt had been the bitter portion of my life, not from choice, but of necessity. My wife took strong ground in support of this resolution—what we had she wanted us to keep. I had too long been aided by her admirable counsel to reject it now. She had a singular longing for seeing me my own landlord. Her resolution was a powerful strengthener of my own convictions.
Thus resolved, we set out in the early part of March to seek a home. I was particular to take my wife with me—I wanted her to aid in choosing it. She was to occupy it as well as myself. She knew exactly what we wanted as regarded the dwelling-house,—the land department she left entirely to my judgment. I was determined that she should be made comfortable from the start, not only because she deserved to be made so, but to make sure that no cause for future discontent should arise. Indeed, she was really the best judge in this matter. She knew whatthe six children needed; she was the model of a housekeeper; there were certain little conveniences indispensable to domestic comfort to be secured, of which she knew more than I did, while her judgment on most things was so correct, that I felt confident if she were fully satisfied, the whole enterprise would be a successful one.
I loved her with the fervor of early married life—she had consented to my plans—she was willing to share whatever inconveniences might belong to our new position—was able to lighten them by her unflagging cheerfulness and thrift—and I was unwilling to take a single step in opposition either to her wishes or her judgment. Indeed, I had long since made up my mind, from observation of the good or bad luck of other men, that he who happens to be blessed with a wife possessing good sense and good judgment, succeeds or fails in life according as he is accustomed to consult her in his business enterprises. There is a world of caution, shrewdness, and latent wisdom in such women, which their husbands too frequently disregard to their ruin.
I am thus particular as to all my experiences; for this is really a domestic story, intended for the multitudes who have suffered half a lifetime from trials similar to mine, and who yet feel ungratified longings for some avenue of escape. My object being to point out that through which I emerged from such a life to one of certainty and comfort, the detail ought to be valuable, even if it fail to be interesting. It is possible that I may sink the practical in the enthusiastic, and prove myself to be unduly enamored of mychoice. But as it is success that makes the hero, so let my experience be accepted as the test.
I had settled it in my mind that I would use thousand dollars in the purchase of land, and that I could make Ten Acres Enough. This I was determined to pay for at once, and have it covered by no man’s parchment. But when we set out on our search, we found some difficulties. Every county in New Jersey contained a hundred farms that were for sale. Most of them were too large for my slender purse, though otherwise most eligibly situated. Then we must have a decent house, even if we were forced to put up with less land. Numerous locations of this kind were offered. The trouble was—keeping my slender purse in view—that the farms were either too large or too small. My wife was not fastidious about having a fine house. On the contrary, I was often surprised to find her pleased with such as to me looked small and mean. Indeed, it seemed, after ten days’ search, that the tables had been turned—she was more easily suited than myself. But the same deference which I paid to her wishes, she uniformly paid to mine.
It was curious to note the anxiety of so many landowners to sell, and to hear the discordant reasons which they gave for desiring to do so. The quantity in market was enormous. All the real-estate agents had large books filled with descriptions of farms and fancy country-seats for sale, some to be had by paying one-fourth of the purchase-money down, and some which the owners would exchange for merchandise, or traps, or houses in the city. Many of themappeared simply to want something else for what they already had. They were tired of holding, and desired a change of some kind, better if they could make it, and worse if they could not. City merchants, or thriving mechanics, had built country cottages, and then wearied of them—it was found inconvenient to be going to and fro—in fact, they had soon discovered that the city alone was their place. Many such told us that their wives did not like the country.
Others had bought farms and spent great sums in improving them, only to sell at a loss. Farming did not pay an owner who lived away off in the city. Another class had taken land for debt, and wanted to realize. They expected to lose anyhow, and would sell cheap. Then there was another body of owners who, though born and raised upon the land, were tired of country life, and wanted to sell and embark in business in the city. Some few were desirous of going to the West. Change of some kind seemed to be the general craving. As I discovered that much of all this land was covered with mortgages of greater or less amount, it was natural to suppose the sheriff would occasionally turn up, and so it really was. There were columns in some of the county papers filled with his advertisements. I sometimes thought the whole country was for sale.
But yet there was a vast body of owners, many of them descendants of the early settlers, whom no consideration of price could tempt to abandon their inheritances. They seemed to know and understand the value of their ancestral acres. We met withother parties, recent purchasers, who had bought for a permanency, and who could not be induced to sell. In short, there seemed to be two constantly flowing streams of people—one tending from city to country, the other from country to city. Doubtless it is the same way with all our large cities. I think the latter stream was the larger. If it were not so, our cities could not grow in population at a rate so much more rapid than the country. At numerous farm-houses inquiries were made if we knew of any openings in the city in which boys and young men could be placed. The city was evidently the coveted goal with too large a number.
This glut of the land-market did not discourage us. We could not be induced to believe that land had no value because so many were anxious to dispose of it. We saw that it did not suit those who held it, and knew that it would suit us. But we could not but lament over the infatuation of many owners, who we felt certain would be ruined by turning their wide acres into money, and exposing it to the hazards of an untried business in the city. I doubt not that many of the very parties we then encountered have, long before this, realized the sad fate we feared, and learned too late that lands are better than merchandise.
One morning, about the middle of March, we found the very spot we had been seeking. It lay upon the Amboy Railroad, within a few miles of Philadelphia, within gunshot of a railroad station, and on the outskirts of a town containing churches, schools, and stores, with quite an educated society.The grounds comprised eleven acres, and the dwelling-house was quite large enough for my family. It struck the fancy of my wife the moment we came up to it; and when she had gone over the house, looked into the kitchen, explored the cellar, and walked round the garden, she expressed the strongest desire to make it our home.
There was barn enough to accommodate a horse and cow, with a ton or two of hay, quite an extensive shed, and I noticed that the barnyard contained a good pile of manure which was to go with the property. The buildings were of modern date, the fences were good, and there was evidence that a former occupant had exercised a taste for fruit and ornamental trees, while the garden was in very fair condition. But the land had been wholly neglected. All outside of the garden was a perfect scarecrow of tall weeds, thousands of which stood clear up to the fence top, making sure that they had scattered seeds enough for twenty future crops.
But I noticed that the land directly opposite was in the most admirable condition, and I saw at a glance that the soil must be adapted to the very purpose to which it was to be applied. The opposite ground was matted with a luxuriant growth of strawberries, while rows of stalwart raspberries held up their vigorous canes in testimony of the goodness of the soil. A fine peach-orchard on the same neighboring property, seemed impatient to put forth and blossom unto harvest. The eleven acres could be no worse land than this, and though I had a horror of weeds, yet I was not to be frightened by them. Iknew that weeds were more indigenous to New Jersey than even watermelons.
This miniature plantation of eleven acres belonged to a merchant in the city. He had taken it to secure a debt of eleven hundred dollars, but had pledged himself to pay the former owner whatever excess over that sum he might obtain for it. But pledges of that loose character seldom amount to much—the creditor consults his own interest, not that of the debtor. The latter had long been trying to sell, but in vain; and now the former had become equally embarrassed, and needed money even more urgently than the debtor had done. The whole property had cost the debtor eighteen hundred dollars. His views in founding it were similar to mine. He meant to establish for himself a home, to which at some future period he might retire. But he made the sad mistake of continuing in business in the city, and one disaster succeeding another, he had been compelled to abandon his anticipated refuge nearly a year before we came along.
All these facts I learned before beginning to negotiate for the purchase. As the banished man related them to me, going largely into the history of his hopes, his trials, his disappointments, I found cause for renewed thankfulness over my superior condition. With a single exception, his experience had been the counterpart of my own—he had lost all and was loaded with debt, while I had saved something and owed no man. But when, in language of the tenderest feeling, he spoke of his wife, whose highest passion had been gratified by thepossession of a home so humble as even this—when he described how happy she had been in her garden, and how grief-stricken at being compelled to leave it—his eloquence fairly made my heart ache. I am sure my wife felt the full force of all he said. Her own attachment to the spot had already begun to take root, and she could sympathize with this rude sundering of a long-established tie.
THEowner of these eleven acres had been for some months in the furnace of pecuniary affliction. He was going the way of nine-tenths of all the business flesh within the circle of my acquaintance. As a purchaser I did not seek him, nor to his representative did myself or my wife let fall a single word indicating that we were pleased with the property. When fifteen hundred dollars were named as the price, I did indulge in some expression of surprise, thinking it was quite enough. Discovering subsequently that the owner was an old city acquaintance, I dropped in one morning to see him, and for an hour we talked over the times, the markets, the savage rates demanded for money, and how the spring business was likely to turn out. On real estate I was mute as a mouse, except giving it as my decided opinion that some holders were asking greater prices than they would be likely to realize.
This side-thrust brought my friend out. He mentioned his house and eleven acres, and eagerly inquired if I did not know of some one who would buy. With as much indifference as I could assume, I asked his terms. He told me with great frankness that he was compelled to sell, and that his need of money was so great, that he might possibly do sowhether the debtor got any thing or not. He urged me to find him a purchaser, and finally gave me the refusal of the place for a few days.
Now, the plain truth was, that my anxiety to buy was quite as great as his was to sell. During the next week we met several times, when he invariably inquired as to the prospect of a purchaser. But I had no encouragement to offer. When I thought I had fought shy long enough, I surprised him by saying that I knew of a purchaser who was ready to take the property at a thousand dollars. He sat down and indulged in some figuring, then for a few moments was silent, then inquired if the offer was a cash one, and when the money could be had. I replied, the moment his deed was ready for delivery.
It was evident that the offer of instant payment determined him to sell at so low a price—cash was every thing. Opening his desk, he took out a deed for the property, ready to execute whenever the grantee’s name, the date and the consideration should have been inserted, handed it to me, and said he accepted the offer, only let him have the money as quickly as possible.
I confess to both exultation and surprise. I had secured an unmistakable bargain. The ready-made deed surprised me, but it showed the owner’s necessities, and that he had been prepared to let the property go at the first decent offer. The natural selfishness of human nature has since induced me to believe that I could have bought for even less, had I not been so precipitate. His searches and brief of title were also ready: a single day or two wasenough to bring them up—he had been determined to sell.
The transaction seemed to involve a succession of surprises. His turn for a new one came when he found that I had inserted my wife’s name in the deed. So, paying him his thousand dollars, I returned with the deed to my wife, telling her that she had now a home of her own; that, come what might, the property was hers; that the laws of New Jersey secured it to her, and that no subsequent destitution of mine could wrest it from her. This little act of consideration was as gratifying a surprise to her as any that either buyer or seller had experienced. If rejoiced at my having secured the place, it gave to it a new interest in her estimation, and fixed and made permanent the attachment she had spontaneously acquired for it. Her gratification only served to increase my own.
It is thus that small acts of kindness make life pleasant and desirable. Every dark object is made light by them, and many scalding tears of sorrow are thus easily brushed away. When the heart is sad, and despondency sits at the entrance of the soul, a little kindness drives despair away, and makes the path cheerful and pleasant. Who then will refuse a kind act? It costs the giver nothing—just as this did; but it is invaluable to the receiver. No broader acres, no more stately mansion, whether in town or country, could now tempt my wife to leave this humble refuge. Here she has been ever happy, and here, I doubt not, she will end her earthly career.
In a week the house was vacated and cleansed, andwe were in full possession. My wife was satisfied, my children were delighted, and I had realized the dream of twenty years! One strong fact forced itself on my attention the first night I passed under my new roof. The drain of three hundred dollars per annum into the pocket of my city landlord had been stopped. My family received as safe a shelter for the interest of a thousand dollars, as he had given them for the interest of five thousand! The feeling of relief from this unappeasable demand was indescribable. Curiously enough, my wife voluntarily suggested that the same feeling of relief had been presented to her. But in addition to this huge equivalent for the investment of a thousand dollars, there was that which might be hereafter realized from the cultivation of eleven acres of land.
This lodgment was effected on the first of April, 1855. When all our household fixings had been snugly arranged, and I took my first walk over my little plantation, on a soft and balmy morning, my feeling of contentment seemed to be perfect. I knew that I was not rich, but it was certain that I was not poor. In contrasting my condition with that of others, both higher and lower upon fortune’s ladder, I found a thousand causes for congratulation, but none for regret. With all his wealth, Rothschild must be satisfied with the same sky that was spread over me. He cannot order a private sunrise, that he may enjoy it with a select circle of friends, nor add a single glory to the gorgeous spectacle of the setting sun. The millionaire could not have more than his share of the pure atmosphere that I was breathing,while the poorest of all men could have as much. God only can give all these, and to many of the poor he has thus given. All that is most valuable can be had for nothing. They come as presents from the hand of an indulgent Father, and neither air nor sky, nor beauty, genius, health, or strength, can be bought or sold. Whatever may be one’s condition in life, the great art is to learn to be content and happy, indulging in no feverish longings for what we have not, but satisfied and thankful for what we have.
ITwas now the season for me to bustle about, fix up my land, and get in my crops. I examined it more carefully, walked over it daily, and made myself thoroughly acquainted with it. As before mentioned, it had been utterly neglected for a whole season, and was grown up with enormous weeds. These, after a day or two of drizzling rain, when the seed-vessels were so wet as not to allow their contents to shatter out, I mowed off, gathered into several large heaps, and burned—thus getting rid of millions of pestiferous seeds. Then I purchased ploughs, including a subsoiler, a harrow, cultivator, and other tools. One acre of the whole was in clover, another was set aside as being occupied by the dwelling-house, garden, stable, and barnyard; but much the larger half of that acre was allowed for garden purposes. This left me just nine acres for general fruit and vegetable culture. I hired a man to plough them up, he finding his own team, and another to follow him in the furrow with my subsoiler. The first went down ten inches, and the latter ten more.
My neighbors were extremely kind with their suggestions. They had never seen such deep ploughing,and warned me not to turn up the old subsoil, and thus bring it to the surface. But they were not book-farmers.
Now, this business of deep subsoil ploughing is a matter of indispensable value in all agriculture, but especially so in the planting of an orchard. No tree can thrive as it ought to, unless the earth is thoroughly and deeply loosened for the free expansion of the roots. If I could have ploughed two feet deep, it would have been all the better. In fact, the art of ploughing is in its mere infancy in this country. Too many of us follow blindly in the beaten track. The first plough was a tough, forked stick, of which one prong served as a beam, while the other dug the earth as a coulter. Of course the ploughing was only scratching. It would have been preposterous to expect the ploughman of Hesiod’s or of Virgil’s time to turn up and mellow the soil to a depth of fifteen or sixteen inches. Down to the present age, ploughing was inevitably a shallow affair. But iron ploughs, steel ploughs, subsoil ploughs, have changed all this. It is as easy to-day to mellow the earth to the depth of two feet, as it was a century ago to turn over a sward to the depth of six inches. Besides, our fierce, trying climate, so different from the moist, milder one of England, Ireland, or even Holland, whence our ancestors emigrated, absolutely requires of us deep ploughing. Drought is our perpetual danger. Most crops are twenty to sixty per cent. short of what they would have been with adequate and seasonable moisture. That moisture exists not only in the skies above, but in the earth beneath our plants. Though the skies may capriciously withhold it, the earth never will, if we provide a rich, mellow subsoil through which the roots can descend for moisture.
The hotter and dryer the weather, the better our plants will grow, if they have rich, warm earth beneath them, reaching down to and including moisture. We cannot, and we need not plough so very deep each year to assure this, if the subsoil is so underdrained that the superabundant moisture of the wet season does not pack it. Underdraining as the foundation, and deep ploughing as the superstructure, with ample manuring and generous tillage, will secure us ample crops, such as any section of our country has rarely seen. Our corn should average seventy bushels per acre. Every field should be ready to grow wheat, if required. Every grass-lot should be good for three tons of hay per acre. Abundant fruits should gladden our fields and enrich our farmers’ tables. So should our children no longer seek, in flight to crowded cities or the remote West, an escape from the ill-paid drudgery and intellectual barrenness of their fathers’ lives, but find abundance and happiness in and around their childhood’s happy homes.
I laid out two hundred dollars in the purchase of old, well-rotted stable manure from the city, spread it over the ten acres, and ploughed up nine of them. I then set out my peach-trees on six acres, planting them in rows eighteen feet apart, and eighteen feet asunder in the rows. This accommodated a hundred and thirty-four to the acre, or eight hundred and four in all. These would not be in the way ofany other crop, and in three years would be likely to yield a good return. The roots of every tree underwent a searching scrutiny before it was planted, to see that they harbored no members of that worm family which is so surely destructive of the peach. As trees are often delivered from the nursery with worms in them, so many of these were infected. The enemy was killed, and the butt of each tree was then swabbed with common tar, extending from where the roots begin to branch out, about twelve inches up. It is just about there, say between wind and water, at the surface of the ground, where the bark is soft, that in June and September the peach-moth deposits her eggs. From these is hatched the worm which kills the tree, unless picked out and destroyed.
To perform this searching operation on a thousand trees every year, would be laborious and expensive. There would also be great danger of its being imperfectly done, as many worms might escape the search, while the vital power of the tree would be seriously impaired by permitting them to prey upon its bark and juices even for a few months. Prevention would be far cheaper than curing. The offensive odor of the tar will cause the moth to shun the tree and to make her deposits somewhere else; while if any chance to light upon it, they will stick to the tar and there perish, like flies upon a sheet of fly paper.
The tar was occasionally examined during the season, to see that it kept soft and sticky; and where any hardening was discovered, a fresh swabbing wasapplied. The whole operation was really one of very little trouble, while the result was highly remunerative. Thoughtfulness, industry, and a little tar, did the business effectually. I believe no nostrum of putting ashes round the butt of a peach-tree to kill the worms, or any other nostrum of the kind is worth a copper. The only sure remedy is prevention. Do not let the worms get in, and there will be no effort needed to get them out.
I planted none but the rarest and choicest kinds. Economy of a few cents in the price of a tree is no economy at all. It is thebestfruit that sells the quickest and pays the highest profit. Yet there are still large quantities of fruit produced which is not worth taking to market. The best is cheaper for both buyer and seller. Hundreds of bushels of apples and peaches are annually made into execrable pies in all the large cities, merely because they can be purchased at less cost than those of a better quality. But it is a mistaken economy with the buyer, as a mild, good-flavored peach or apple requires less sugar, and will then make a better pie. Many persons have a pride in, and attach too much consequence to a tree which sprung up spontaneously on their own farm, or perhaps which they have cultivated with some care; and then numbers of comparatively worthless seedlings occupy the places that should be improved by finer varieties, and which, if cultivated, would afford a greater profit.
It is as easy to grow the choicest as the meanest fruit. I have a relative in Ohio who has a peach orchard of eleven acres, which has yielded him five thousand dollars in a single season, during whichpeaches were selling in Cincinnati at twenty-five cents a bushel. It is easy to understand that his orchard would not have produced him that sum at that price. No, it did not. He received two dollars a bushel more readily than his neighbors got twenty-five cents for the same variety of peaches, and this is how he did it. When the peaches had grown as large as a hickory nut, he employed a large force and put on one hundred and eighty-five days’ work in picking off the excess of fruit. More than one-half of the fruit then upon the trees was carefully removed. Each limb was taken by hand, and where, within a space of eighteen inches, there would be probably twenty peaches, but six or seven of the fairest would be left to ripen. Thus, by carefully removing all but the strongest specimens, and throwing all the vigor of the tree into them, the peaches ripen early, and are remarkable for size and excellence of quality.
But this was labor! Seven months’ labor of one man in a small peach orchard! But be it so—the net profit was between three and four thousand dollars. If he had neglected his trees, the owner’s profits would have been a crop of peaches hardly fit to feed the pigs. I have profited largely by following his example, and will relate my own experience when the returns of my orchard come in.
I intend to be particular touching my peach orchard, as well for the gratification of my own pride, as an incentive to those who cannot be made to believe Ten Acres Enough. My success with it has far outstripped my expectations; and I pronounce apeach orchard of this size, planted and cultivated as it can be, and will be, by an intelligent man not essentially lazy, as the sheet anchor of his safety. I was careful to plant none but small trees, because such can be removed from the nursery with greater safety than large ones, while the roots are less multiplied, and thus receive fewer injuries; neither are they liable to be displaced by high winds before acquiring a firm foothold in the ground. Many persons suppose that newly planted trees should be large enough to be out of danger from cattle running among them; but all cattle should be excluded from a young orchard.
Moreover, small trees make a better growth, and are more easily trimmed into proper shape. All experienced horticulturists testify to the superior eligibility of small trees. They cost less at the nursery, less in transportation, and very few fail to grow. One year old from the bud is old enough, and the same, generally, may be said of apples and pears. I dug holes for each tree three feet square and two feet deep, and filled in with a mixture of the surrounding top-soil and leached ashes, a half bushel of the latter to each tree. Knowing that the peach-tree delights in ashes, I obtained four hundred bushels from a city soap-works, and am satisfied they were exactly the manure my orchard needed. Every root which had been wounded by the spade in removing the tree from the nursery, was cut off just back of the wound, paring it smooth with a sharp knife. The fine earth was settled around the roots by pouring in water; after which the mixture of earthand ashes was thrown on until the hole was filled, leaving a slight depression round the tree, to catch the rain, and the tree at about the same level it had maintained when standing in the nursery.
I did not stake up the trees. They were too small to need it; besides, I should be all the time on hand to keep them in position. Being a new-comer, I had no straw with which to mulch them, to retain the proper moisture about the roots, or it would have been applied. But the season turned out to be abundantly showery, and they went on growing from the start. Not a tree was upset by storm or wind, nor did one of them die. I do not think the oldest nurseryman in the country could have been more successful.
This operation made a heavy draft on the small cash capital which I possessed. But small as it was, it was large enough to show that capital is indispensable to successful farming. Had I been without it, my orchard would have been a mere hope, instead of a reality, and I might have been compelled to wait for years before feeling rich enough to establish it. But when the work of planting was over, my satisfaction was extreme; and when I saw the trees in full leaf, giving token that the work had been well done, I felt that I had not only learned but accomplished much. I had been constantly on the ground while the planting was progressing—had seen for myself that every tree was cleared of worms—had held them up while the water and the earth and ashes had been thrown in and gently packed about the roots—and had given so much attention in otherways, as to feel sure that no part of the whole operation had been neglected; and hence I had a clear right to regard it as my own job.
The cost of planting this orchard was as follows:
I have unfairly saddled on the orchard the whole charge of two hundred dollars for manure, because it went to nourish other crops which the same ground produced. But let that go—the land was quite poor, needed all it got, and I had no faith in farming without manure. Had my purse been heavy enough, the quantity should have been trebled.
As I am writing for the benefit of others, who, I hope, are not yet tired of peaches, let me add that this fruit will not succeed on ground where a previous orchard has been recently grown; neither can one be sure of getting healthy trees from any nurseryman who grows his on land from which he had recently produced a similar crop. The seed must be from healthy trees, and the buds from others equally free from disease. The peach, unless carefully watched and attended, is a short-lived tree. But it returns a generous income to a careful and generous grower. Of latter years the worm is its most formidable enemy. But with those who think a good tree is as much worth being taken care of as a good horse,there will be neither doubt nor difficulty in keeping the destroyer out.