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
grass. 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 shipping, wagons for
delivering, and a complete outfit of tools are necessary. You must
raise all sorts of vegetables and salad plants in quantities
sufficiently large to justify you in giving your whole time to the
work. An acre devoted to general market gardening could be attended
to by two men with some extra help for 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 sass ever since he was a boy, and seen his father do
it before him," can teach you correctly?
Men learn very slowly by experience, because no two experiences are
exactly alike, unless they perceive and apply the principles under
the experience.
An intelligent man accustomed to investigation can learn more about
a specialty in a week's study than an untrained practitioner can
believe in a year.
What the untrained teacher can tell us is of little account; what he
shows us is another matter.
Therefore get help who know that they don't know anything about a
garden and who consequently will do with a will exactly what you
tell them to do; such labor is cheap--why should you pay extravagant
prices for skill to a man who has succeeded so poorly that he can
only earn day's wages? You can get much better knowledge at less
cost from a book. Study and put your knowledge into practice
yourself, where you see promise of a profit.
Almost every crop can be made a specialty. In proportion as special
crops are profitable when conditions are right, so are they sources
of loss when things go wrong. If, after your first season in the
country, some special crop takes your fancy, give extra space and
time to it the second year and see if you are successful in handling
an eighth or a quarter acre. If so, you may extend your operations
as rapidly as purse and market permit.
Before concentrating upon any crop as the chief source of income, a
careful study must be made of all the conditions surrounding its
production; a crop is not produced in the broad meaning of that term
until it is actually in the hands of the consumer.
Potatoes, for instance, are grown by the hundred acres in sections
adapted to their growth, and special machinery costing hundreds of
dollars is used in planting, cultivating, and harvesting the crop.
The good shipping and keeping qualities of the potato enable it to
be raised far from markets and so brings into competition cheap land
worked in large areas, with large capital. In spite of this,
however, the small cultivator can usually make money if he can sell
his potatoes directly to the consumer.
If your land is so situated that you can put your individuality into
the crop and can control all the circumstances, preparation of land,
planting, cultivation, harvesting, and marketing, your chances of
success are immeasurably increased. As soon as any important part
must be trusted to some one beyond your control, danger arises.
Assiduous care in planting, cultivating, and packing will avail
nothing if the product falls into the hands of transportation
companies or commission merchants indifferent as to what becomes of
it. It is therefore better to be quite independent, sell your own
crop, and have the whole operation in your own hands from the very
beginning.
Generally speaking, seed growing for the market is a highly
developed special business which is usually carried on by companies
operating with large capital, able to employ the best experts, and
to avail themselves of all the advantages of scientific methods in
culture, regardless of expense. So uncertain is the business, that
even with all these facilities, they rarely guarantee seeds. It is
obvious that the amateur has little chance of succeeding in such a
difficult business. Nevertheless, he will be able after a few
seasons of increasing experience to gather seeds from selected
plants and so furnish his own supply. It must be borne in mind,
however, that plants can be improved by cross breeding and that by
keeping a variety too long on the same ground its quality
deteriorates, and the plant tends to revert to the type natural to
it before domestication.
When land is cropped every season, the nitrogen, potash, and
phosphorus removed from the soil must be replaced in some form,
otherwise you have diminishing returns, while the expense for labor
is the same. In farming small areas for specialties you cannot
easily invoke the principle of rotation by enriching the land with
legumes, to be plowed under while green, the bacteria on the roots
of which gather nitrogen from the air, but you must get stable
manure or buy chemical fertilizers to maintain the fertility.
Special crops divide themselves naturally into two classes: those
raised for immediate shipment to market, and those to be hauled to
canneries. The first type are generally prepared in a more expensive
way, and need more care and attention. Each class requires its own
special forms of packing to conform to market peculiarities fixed by
the taste of consumers.
For the cultivation of all specialties, many items of preparation
are identical. Land must be well drained, it must contain a
sufficient amount of humus, or decaying vegetable matter, to make it
loose and porous; it must be free from sticks and stones or any
foreign matter likely to impede cultivation or obstruct growth. The
proper formation of a seed bed is a prime prerequisite to successful
cropping. After the land is manured and plowed it should be gone
over in all directions with a disk and smoothing harrow, until it is
of a dustlike fineness.
In thorough cultivation before the crop is planted, lies the secret
of many a success, and in its neglect the cause of many failures.
Intelligent handling of crops is in a large measure knowledge of the
influence of wind and rain, sunshine and darkness, on the particular
nature of the plant Delicate plants, for example, ought to be grown
where buildings or forests break the force of prevailing winds.
Sheltered valleys in irrigated sections have proved the best for
intensive cultivation. For thousands of years in China and Japan the
conditions of successful intensive cultivation have been well
understood, and to-day the most efficient gardeners are the Chinese.
In some parts of Mexico, for the same reasons, intensive cultivation
has reached a high development. In our own West we are catching up
on vegetables and fruits.