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THE FAT OF THE LAND
[Illustration]
THE FAT OF THE LAND
The Story of an American Farm
BY
JOHN WILLIAMS STREETER
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1904
_All rights reserved_
copyright, 1904.
by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published February, 1904. Reprinted March,
April, May, 1904.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To POLLY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MY EXCUSE 3
II. THE HUNTING OF THE LAND 11
III. THE FIRST VISIT TO THE FARM 14
IV. THE HIRED MAN 25
V. BORING FOR WATER 31
VI. WE TAKE POSSESSION 36
VII. THE HORSE-AND-BUGGY MAN 45
VIII. WE PLAT THE FARM 49
IX. HOUSE-CLEANING 54
X. FENCED IN 61
XI. THE BUILDING LINE 67
XII. CARPENTERS QUIT WORK 70
XIII. PLANNING FOR THE TREES 78
XIV. PLANTING OF THE TREES 88
XV. POLLY'S JUDGMENT HALL 94
XVI. WINTER WORK 101
XVII. WHAT SHALL WE ASK OF THE HEN? 103
XVIII. WHITE WYANDOTTES 110
XIX. FRIED PORK 116
XX. A RATION FOR PRODUCT 121
XXI. THE RAZORBACK 126
XXII. THE OLD ORCHARD 135
XXIII. THE FIRST HATCH 138
XXIV. THE HOLSTEIN MILK MACHINE 144
XXV. THE DAIRYMAID 150
XXVI. LITTLE PIGS 155
XXVII. WORK ON THE HOME FORTY 158
XXVIII. DISCOUNTING THE MARKET 164
XXIX. FROM CITY TO COUNTRY 169
XXX. AUTUMN RECKONING 174
XXXI. THE CHILDREN 178
XXXII. THE HOME-COMING 183
XXXIII. CHRISTMAS EVE 189
XXXIV. CHRISTMAS 194
XXXV. WE CLOSE THE BOOKS FOR '96 199
XXXVI. OUR FRIENDS 202
XXXVII. THE HEADMAN'S JOB 210
XXXVIII. SPRING OF '97 217
XXXIX. THE YOUNG ORCHARD 225
XL. THE TIMOTHY HARVEST 230
XLI. STRIKE AT GORDON'S MINE 236
XLII. THE RIOT 250
XLIII. THE RESULT 260
XLIV. DEEP WATERS 268
XLV. DOGS AND HORSES 274
XLVI. THE SKIM-MILK TRUST 282
XLVII. NABOTH'S VINEYARD 285
XLVIII. MAIDS AND MALLARDS 294
XLIX. THE SUNKEN GARDEN 298
L. THE HEADMAN GENERALIZES 303
LI. THE GRAND-GIRLS 308
LII. THE THIRD RECKONING 313
LIII. THE MILK MACHINE 317
LIV. BACON AND EGGS 328
LV. THE OLD TIME FARM-HAND 337
LVI. THE SYNDICATE 342
LVII. THE DEATH OF SIR TOM 346
LVIII. BACTERIA 352
LIX. MATCH-MAKING 355
LX. "I TOLD YOU SO" 362
LXI. THE BELGIAN FARMER 367
LXII. HOME-COMING 375
LXIII. AN HUNDRED FOLD 378
LXIV. COMFORT ME WITH APPLES 383
LXV. THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR 388
LXVI. LOOKING BACKWARD 394
LXVII. LOOKING FORWARD 402
THE FAT OF THE LAND
CHAPTER I
MY EXCUSE
My sixtieth birthday is a thing of yesterday, and I have, therefore,
more than half descended the western slope. I have no quarrel with life
or with time, for both have been polite to me; and I wish to give an
account of the past seven years to prove the politeness of life, and to
show how time has made amends to me for the forced resignation of my
professional ambitions. For twenty-five years, up to 1895, I practised
medicine and surgery in a large city. I loved my profession beyond the
love of most men, and it loved me; at least, it gave me all that a
reasonable man could desire in the way of honors and emoluments. The
thought that I should ever drop out of this attractive, satisfying life,
never seriously occurred to me, though I was conscious of a strong and
persistent force that urged me toward the soil. By choice and by
training I was a physician, and I gloried in my work; but by instinct I
was, am, and always shall be, a farmer. All my life I have had visions
of farms with flocks and herds, but I did not expect to realize my
visions until I came on earth a second time.
I would never have given up my profession voluntarily; but when it gave
me up, I had to accept the dismissal, surrender my ambitions, and fall
back upon my primary instinct for diversion and happiness. The dismissal
came without warning, like the fall of a tree when no wind shakes the
forest, but it was imperative and peremptory. The doctors (and they were
among the best in the land) said, "No more of this kind of work for
years," and I had to accept their verdict, though I knew that "for
years" meant forever.
My disappointment lasted longer than the acute attack; but, thanks to
the cheerful spirit of my wife, by early summer of that year I was able
to face the situation with courage that grew as strength increased.
Fortunately we were well to do, and the loss of professional income was
not a serious matter. We were not rich as wealth is counted nowadays;
but we were more than comfortable for ourselves and our children, though
I should never earn another dollar. This is not the common state of the
physician, who gives more and gets less than most other men; it was
simply a happy combination of circumstances. Polly was a small heiress
when we married; I had some money from my maternal grandfather; our
income was larger than our necessities, and our investments had been
fortunate. Fate had set no wolf to howl at our door.
In June we decided to take to the woods, or rather to the country, to
see what it had in store for us. The more we thought of it, the better I
liked the plan, and Polly was no less happy over it. We talked of it
morning, noon, and night, and my half-smothered instinct grew by what it
fed on. Countless schemes at length resolved themselves into a factory
farm, which should be a source of pleasure as well as of income. It was
of all sizes, shapes, industries, and limits of expenditure, as the
hours passed and enthusiasm waxed or waned. I finally compromised on
from two hundred to three hundred acres of land, with a total
expenditure of not more than $60,000 for the building of my factory. It
was to produce butter, eggs, pork, and apples, all of best quality, and
they were to be sold at best prices. I discoursed at some length on
farms and farmers to Polly, who slept through most of the harangue. She
afterward said that she enjoyed it, but I never knew whether she
referred to my lecture or to her nap.
If farming be the art of elimination, I want it not. If the farmer and
the farmer's family must, by the nature of the occupation, be deprived
of reasonable leisure and luxury, if the conveniences and amenities must
be shorn close, if comfort must be denied and life be reduced to the
elemental necessities of food and shelter, I want it not. But I do not
believe that this is the case. The wealth of the world comes from the
land, which produces all the direct and immediate essentials for the
preservation of life and the protection of the race. When people cease
to look to the land for support, they lose their independence and fall
under the tyranny of circumstances beyond their control. They are no
longer producers, but consumers; and their prosperity is contingent upon
the prosperity and good will of other people who are more or less alien.
Only when a considerable percentage of a nation is living close to the
land can the highest type of independence and prosperity be enjoyed.
This law applies to the mass and also to the individual. The farmer, who
produces all the necessities and many of the luxuries, and whose
products are in constant demand and never out of vogue, should be
independent in mode of life and prosperous in his fortunes. If this is
not the condition of the average farmer (and I am sorry to say it is
not), the fault is to be found, not in the land, but in the man who
tills it.
Ninety-five per cent of those who engage in commercial and professional
occupations fail of large success; more than fifty per cent fail
utterly, and are doomed to miserable, dependent lives in the service of
the more fortunate. That farmers do not fail nearly so often is due to
the bounty of the land, the beneficence of Nature, and the
ever-recurring seed-time and harvest, which even the most thoughtless
cannot interrupt.
The waking dream of my life had been to own and to work land; to own it
free of debt, and to work it with the same intelligence that has made me
successful in my profession. Brains always seemed to me as necessary to
success in farming as in law, or in medicine, or in business. I always
felt that mind should control events in agriculture as in commercial
life; that listlessness, carelessness, lack of thrift and energy, and
waste, were the factors most potent in keeping the farmer poor and
unreasonably harassed by the obligations of life. The men who cultivate
the soil create incalculable wealth; by rights they should be the
nation's healthiest, happiest, most comfortable, and most independent
citizens. Their lives should be long, free from care and distress, and
no more strenuous than is wholesome. That this condition is not general
is due to the fact that the average farmer puts muscle before mind and
brawn before brains, and follows, with unthinking persistence, the crude
and careless traditions of his forefathers.
Conditions on the farm are gradually changing for the better. The
agricultural colleges, the experiment stations, the lecture courses
which are given all over the country, and the general diffusion of
agricultural and horticultural knowledge, are introducing among farming
communities a more intelligent and more liberal treatment of land. But
these changes are so slow, and there is so much to be done before even
a small percentage of our six millions of farmers begin to realize their
opportunities, that even the weakest effort in this direction may be of
use. This is my only excuse for going minutely into the details of my
experiment in the cultivation of land. The plain and circumstantial
narrative of how Four Oaks grew, in seven years, from a poor,
ill-paying, sadly neglected farm, into a beautiful home and a profitable
investment, must simply stand for what it is worth. It may give useful
hints, to be followed on a smaller or a larger scale, or it may arouse
criticisms which will work for good, both to the critic and to the
author. I do not claim experience, excepting the most limited; I do not
claim originality, except that most of this work was new to me; I do not
claim hardships or difficulties, for I had none; but I do claim that I
made good, that I arrived, that my experiment was physically and
financially a success, and, as such, I am proud of it, and wish to give
it to the world.
I was fifty-three years old when I began this experiment, and I was
obliged to do quickly whatever I intended to do. I could devote any part
of $60,000 to the experiment without inconvenience. My desire was to
test the capacity of ordinary farm land, when properly treated, to
support an average family in luxury, paying good wages to more than the
usual number of people, keeping open house for many friends, and at the
same time not depleting my bank account. I wished to experiment in
_intensive farming_, using ordinary farm land as other men might do
under similar or modified circumstances. I believed that if I fed the
land, it would feed me. My plan was to sell nothing from the farm except
finished products, such as butter, fruit, eggs, chickens, and hogs. I
believed that best results would be attained by keeping only the best
stock, and, after feeding it liberally, selling it in the most favorable
market. To live on the fat of the land was what I proposed to do; and I
ask your indulgence while I dip into the details of this seven years'
experiment.
You may say that few persons have the time, inclination, taste, or money
to carry out such an experiment; that the average farmer must make each
year pay, and that the exploiting of this matter is therefore of
interest to a very limited number. Admitting much of this, I still claim
that there is a lesson to every struggling farmer in this narrative. It
should teach the value of brain work on the farm, and the importance of
intelligent cultivation; also the advantages of good seed, good tilth,
good specimens of well-bred stock, good food, and good care. Feed the
land liberally, and it will return you much. Permit no waste in space,
product, time, tools, or strength. Do in a small way, if need be, what I
have done on a large scale, and you will quickly commence to get good
dividends. I have spent much more money than was really necessary on
the place, and in the ornamentation of Four Oaks. This, however, was
part of the experiment. I asked the land not only to supply immediate
necessities, but to minister to my every want, to gratify the eye, and
please the senses by a harmonious fusion of utility and beauty. I wanted
a fine country home and a profitable investment within the same ring
fence.
Will you follow me through the search for the land, the purchase, and
the tremendous house-cleaning of the first year? After that we will take
up the years as they come, finding something of special interest
attaching naturally to each. I shall have to deal much with figures and
statistics, in a small way, and my pages may look like a school book,
but I cannot avoid this, for in these figures and statistics lies the
practical lesson. Theory alone is of no value. Practical application of
the theory is the test. I am not imaginative. I could not write a
romance if I tried. My strength lies in special detail, and I am willing
to spend a lot of time in working out a problem. I do not claim to have
spent this time and money without making serious mistakes; I have made
many, and I am willing to admit them, as you will see in the following
pages. I do claim, however, that, in spite of mistakes, I have solved
the problem, and have proved that an intelligent farmer can live in
luxury on the fat of the land.