Part 11 (1/2)

What may not adult skilled labor produce when applied freely to the land.

CHAPTER IX

TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT--SPECIALIZED CROPS

To subdue the land with an ax, a plow and a spade is possible; millions of acres have been so subdued. This method, however, is the most expensive of all, 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, ax, etc.) covers the indispensible:

1 team horses (these may be hired) $200.00 1 walking plow 10.00 1 disk or cutaway harrow 25.00 1 farm wagon 50.00 1 cultivator (two horse) 25.00 1 one-horse cultivator 8.00 Shovels, pick, mattock or grubbing hoe 10.00 Work harness for two horses 25.00

TOTAL $353.00

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 fences. A sickle is handy to keep down gra.s.s. To reduce living expenses, a cow for $60, 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 machines and tools, and they will rust through the winter. Many farmers, through neglect, have to replace their tool equipment every four or five years, but with 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 minimum for beginning work. The character of additions to it will depend much upon the crops which you select as the money getters.

For general market gardening and the kitchen garden too, the following tool list, together with the above, will include everything absolutely necessary.

Wheel hoe $6.00 Spade and fork, each $1.00 2.00 Push hoe .65 Watering can .60 Rake and common hoe 1.00 Bulb sprayer .25 Trowel .10

TOTAL $10.60

The wheel hoe is a great saver--of backache, especially to the beginner; as Warner says, ”at the best you will conclude that for gardening purposes a cast-iron back with a hinge in it is preferable to the ones now in use.”

The dibble, an old tool handle, or a bit of broomstick sharpened, and garden lines to get the rows straight, labels, tomato supports, plant protectors and stakes earl all be homemade out of old material. The full outfit would include the following:

Roller $8.00 Wheel-hoe with seeder 8.50 Sprayer 3.75 Wheelbarrow 4.00 Crowbar 1.50 Weeder .35

For such crops as admit of horse cultivation 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 off young weeds which are just starting above ground. It is pushed backward and forward and cuts both ways. It is very good for soft ground; on a harder patch use the push hoe.

A market garden is really a big kitchen garden, from which the cultivator supplies not only his own family, but his neighbors, the public. To run a successful market garden for profit, land suitably situated near transportation and markets, a large supply of stable manure, hotbeds for raising plants, crates for s.h.i.+pping, wagons for delivering, and a complete outfit of tools are necessary. You must raise all sorts of vegetables and salad plants in quant.i.ties 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 marketing.

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 maximum production. Crops like asparagus and 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, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, etc. and one acre kept for buildings, poultry, 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 successful 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 any one else how to do it.

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 ignoramus talk you out of experimenting under their guidance. You will learn little without experience, and unless you have the grower's instinct, you will learn less without 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. Even the cat won't stand being rubbed up the wrong way; but the barber never thought of that.

We lawyers and the doctors are supposed to be thorough in our own field--I said lately to one of the ablest men at the New York Bar, ”About one lawyer in a hundred 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 sa.s.s ever since he was a boy, and seen his father do it before him,” can teach you correctly?