THREE HUNDRED ACRES NOT ENOUGH.
I am writing this supplementary chapter after the expiration of nearly
fifteen years since the record of my farming experiences was commenced;
and while I have nothing to take from the interesting statements which
have been set forth in the previous pages, I have much to add to them.
Everything has gone on as it began, with the same invariable pleasure,
profit, and satisfaction. The field and the fields of my labor have
alike been one long delight--from the soft yellow of the upturned
surfaces when the plough had just prepared them for the seeds, through
their period of emerald-green promise and their crowning glories of
fruitful russet and gold, till they passed under the snow-white mantle
of their wintry death. My success on “five acres” was so triumphant that
I purchased a farm of twenty-five at Rockville Centre, and subsequently
one of two hundred at Sayville, and to those have kept perpetually
adding till they number three hundred and fifty, and bid fair never to
be enough. My feet have trodden all the highways and by-ways of
successful agriculture, and my efforts have done much to solve the great
problem that the world has been groping over for four thousand years;
for only when science shall teach just how much hydrogen, nitrogen,
super-phosphate, hydrocephalus, tredecem radiatus, esox reticulatus, and
cerebro-spinal meningitis make up the component parts of every stalk of
corn, grain of wheat, or head of oats will the human race be redeemed
from darkness and ignorance, and all men made rich and happy.
Patrick and I built hot-beds and cold-frames; and if the hot-beds did
come out cold-frames, and the cold-frames occasionally endeavored to be
hot-beds by burning up all the plants in them, we were sure to get one
or the other almost every time. Moreover, we have had our triumphs as
great as those of war. We have raised the mammoth squash, a miniature
planet of orange loveliness, bursting with beauty and solid with
succulence--so roomy, that Cinderella would have found no trouble in
using it for her coach, or Peter Piper for a wife-protector. It was sent
to the county fair, where it was much admired by my friends, and caused
much envy in the mind of Weeville, to judge from the disparaging
remarks he indulged about the taste and value of squashes. It would have
taken the prize were it not that another farmer had sent one a few
pounds heavier, although far inferior in contour and general excellence
of expression. Ours should have had a second prize, but that the chief
official informed me that they never gave second prizes for squashes.
Of course there have been drawbacks, but what mattered it if the
commonplaces did not come up to expectation, if the turnips and carrots
failed and the grass dried up. Who could not spare the horse vegetables
in the land of the pea, the Lima-bean, the asparagus?--where there was
never too much heat or drought for the sweet corn, and where the
luxuriant egg-plants would spread out their broad green hands to the
generous sun in gratitude for his rays in summer, and would round out
their purple globes in the cool days of September and October--that is,
when the potato-bug did not eat them all up. Insects have become rather
over-abundant. Indeed this might be said to be the bug age, in contrast
with the stone age and the iron age and the golden age which have passed
before. There is every known and unknown sort of insect on Long Island.
The Colorado beetle paid his respects promptly, on his evolution, and
has remained permanently; the borers bore our apple-trees; the curculio
swarms in our plum-trees; moths and army-worms and tent-caterpillars and
every other sort of creeping and stinging thing assist our labors and
share our profits.
The poor broken-backed farmer has fallen upon the day of small
things--the winged, creeping, crawling, and ever-devouring small things
of six legs and more or less wings and unlimited stomach; those that
delve in the ground and worm their way into roots, or climb up the
branches and eat the leaves, or which strike the fruit and spot and
blight it. He must poison the potato-beetle, he must burn the galleys
and cities of the tent-builders, he must prod the borers with wires. By
comparison with these the hum of the ever-present mosquito is but a
humbug, and his bites flea-bites.
Following the directions of enthusiastic bug sportsmen I tried to
inveigle the innocent moths into the candle of destruction. Patrick was
directed, to place a lamp in the orchard and set it in a pan of water
with kerosene oil on the surface. There was every reason to expect that
the moths from their known weakness for light would have rushed to this
death-trap by myriads. But Patrick soon gave the most discouraging
accounts of bug behavior and insect artifice.
“Arrah that was no good at all at all,” he said in a disgusted tone.
“They wouldn’t be after going widin a mile of it.”
“But, Patrick,” I replied reprovingly, for I was afraid he had not given
the experiment a fair trial, “they must have been within a mile of it,
as the orchard is not a quarter of a mile either way, and they seem to
be as plenty there as ever.”
“And your honor may well say that. Plenty, is it? There is no end of
them, and they keep growing on us every day.”
That was a personal way of stating the case which made my flesh creep,
and sent itching sensations over my whole body. So I asked him hastily,
“Then why did you not try the lamp?”
“Try? And sure and I did that same. Och, but it burned beautifully, and
all the country round could have seen their way to steal our fruit, only
there wasn’t any fruit to steal. More’s the pity.”
“Well, what did you catch?” I asked impatiently.
“Catch, is it? Sure the first night I caught a mosquito and a house-fly,
and the next night I caught only a mosquito. I didn’t think it worth
while to be wasting oil at that rate, for we would be a hundred years
before we caught all the bugs in our orchard; and then, more be token,
they would grow ten times as fast.”
Since the commencement of my horticultural operations I had had on my
mind and in my heart a longing for a bed of mushrooms. The realization
of this dream had been postponed in consequence of a certain obscurity
in the directions contained in my authorities. Bridgeman was very
enthusiastic and hopeful, but slightly incomprehensible. He said that
the bed must be established in “a light cellar.” Now none of my houses
had a light cellar--neither the first one imported from Nantucket, which
might be expected to produce any imaginable eccentricity, nor that
old-fashioned farm-house at Rockville Centre, nor the modern production
of lath and plaster. It is true that when the first was in the formative
state--had got as far as the cellar and no farther--in which condition
it remained, as has been explained, that part of the construction was as
light as could be wished; still I felt in my soul that the necessary
cellar must be the cellar of a house, not a house that was all cellar.
If Bridgeman had only said a light garret, I could have accommodated
him. But all cellars I had ever entered were dark. Or if there had been
some way of putting a cellar out of doors. I could have introduced the
gas into the cellar, but was afraid to burn it or kerosene lest they
might burn too much. I was all in the dark about the cellar, and doubted
whether artificial aid if attainable would convert its inherent darkness
into the light of Bridgeman’s intelligence.
He said if there was no light cellar we might use an old shed. But here,
again, was a similar difficulty. We had no old shed; they were all new:
besides, they were not much lighter than the cellar. Light was evidently
necessary, and it was only after much thought that I hit upon a feasible
plan. We had built a sort of greenhouse; it had not been used long, the
plants not proving green enough to live in it, and it had been converted
into a chicken-coop for the forcing of infant chickens. No better place
could be selected, if light was wanted; for the sun poured down upon its
glass roof and sides all day long, till the chickens got so over-heated
under the forcing process that they spent most of their time, when they
were not engaged pulling out each other’s feathers, standing and panting
with their mouths open. Here it was that I determined to establish the
mushroom-bed, where it would have a sure chance to heat, and where it
could have as much light as the lightest cellar Bridgeman had ever
discovered.
When I subsequently mentioned my intentions to Patrick, he made
incoherent remarks about “its being too hot intirely, and that the sun
would burn them all up.” But he had not studied the habits of mushrooms
and their demand for light; so we picked out “the droppings,” as we were
ordered from day to day, and turned and flattened them, and laid layers
of earth between layers of them, in the most approved manner. The middle
of August arrived before we were through, and the place was so hot I
fairly gasped as I worked in it; but when it was completed, I broke the
cakes of mushroom spawn into pieces, and deposited them under a few
inches of soil, and covering the whole with a deep mass of straw,
awaited developments. It was some time before any results made their
appearance; then there was a motion in the earth, which, at first I
supposed was the activity of the seeds and the bursting forth of the
fruitful fungi. Nothing of that sort came of it. Instead, the motion
extended itself till it resembled a gentle movement of the entire bed.
At this my suspicions were aroused, and I proceeded quietly and
cautiously to investigate. I lifted off the straw from one corner, and
stirred the earth and dug down into it; then the truth came upon me.
There was a motion--a motion through the entire conglomeration of earth
and droppings; but it was not of the bursting fungi, nor even vegetable
in its origin; it was entirely vermicular: the bed was one wriggling,
moving, turning, twisting mass of worms. They might have been a new
development of the worm family--a sort of mushroom worm produced by
spontaneous generation; but I had not the heart to investigate them,
under the knowledge that all our efforts to produce a bed of mushrooms
were to end in the production of a crop of worms.
I said nothing to Patrick, but carried out the straw, and let in the
chickens once more. They had got a fresh growth of feathers from running
about the grounds, and had accumulated a healthy appetite, and the way
they scratched and dug and dusted in that mushroom-bed showed the extent
of our misdirected results, and assured me that if we ever wanted to
raise chickens all we had to do was to establish a mushroom-bed on the
most approved principles, and in a light and sunny exposure.
Hardly, however, had the painful admission of our failure been forced
upon us, when a special Providence, as it might be called, or an
agricultural equipoise, came to our assistance. I had laid out a portion
of the garden for a plot of fall spinach, and told Patrick to give it
what is politely termed a “good dressing”--a ball costume, or regular
wedding outfit of manure. This had been planted, but gave no signs of
coming to fruition; at least Patrick assured me that he had “put
lashings of seeds into it,” although doubts began to arise whether he
had not forgotten that important step in successful agriculture. The
plants certainly did not show up, although we were now passing well into
the autumn, and I was wondering how I could turn that “dressing” to
account. One morning, as I was studying the problem, I noticed that
there had been a movement in the soil, such as I had at first hoped from
my mushroom-bed. Little mounds had erected themselves here and there, as
though the tiniest of gnomes were at work, or the spinach had collected
itself in spots for one tremendous and united effort to break through
the stubborn soil. I instantly suspected more worms, and thought of
turning the chickens from the hothouse into the garden, but before doing
so resolved to investigate. To my equal surprise and delight I found,
on uncovering one of these mounds, that they were the mud-homes of the
precious fungi, and that the mushrooms which were vainly sought in the
light of science, were the mound-builders, and had surreptitiously
transferred themselves to the garden. There are many surprises in
horticulture, and especially in mushroom propagation. Having produced a
bed of vermicular life when I was in pursuit of fungi, a reward of fungi
had equalized matters by usurping the place of a plot of spinach. I
watched those succulent eccentricities with the attention they merited.
I lifted the earth off their tender heads lest they should be pressed
back into the ground. I gloated over their creamy consistency, so
superior to the dull discoloration of the vapid and faded objects
purchased in the markets. At last my well-earned triumph was to come,
and Weeville was to be taught that, although I might not succeed
precisely as I had planned, intelligence and study were sure to be
crowned in the end. The weather was growing cooler, the season being
early, and I felt that no time was to be lost.
I proceeded promptly to make a collection of the luscious edibles as
soon as they were sufficiently matured and abundant, determined to use
them as a surprise to my friends in the city, including Weeville, who
was not to escape from my triumph now. There was no depending on the
uncertain future, for the grounds of glory were in the basket. I
telegraphed an invitation to a supper at the Manhattan Club, merely
saying I would bring a dish from my farm that I thought would astonish
my friends, and teach them that there was something in home-farming
after all. It was a big basket and well filled, that there might be no
stint, and weighed so heavily when packed that I put it on the piazza
out of the sun till Patrick should bring up the horse. The horse was
rather restive; horses always are restive till you get in, and seem to
be in a terrible hurry, and there is no end to their anxiety to be under
way till they are, when they generally become more moderate. Our horse
was peculiarly unsteady on this occasion, and Patrick had all he could
do to control him as I climbed over the wheels, for years of hard toil
in the field have made me stiff in my limbs, and slow in climbing. So we
started in some confusion and trepidation. It was only when the train
had reached Jamaica that I found that I had forgotten all about my
basket of mushrooms, and had left it calmly resting in the shadiest part
of the piazza.
The little party went off very pleasantly at the club, and I left the
guests mystified as to which special dish it was that had come from the
farm, although Weeville in his blunt fashion blurted out that he
believed “I had made another failure of it.”
That night there came a severe frost, and not only were all the
mushrooms that had been picked shrivelled up, but those in the garden
were killed. I kept that spot sacred next season, hoping that the
treasure of the earth would again present itself: but the little genii
never favored me thereafter; nothing but weeds grew the ensuing summer,
and after that we converted it to the raising of corn and cucumbers.
This was a disappointment, but I had the satisfaction of feeling that I
had raised the finest mushrooms that ever were seen, and could raise
them again, provided they took into their heads to appear as
unexpectedly as in this remarkable instance. It is a permanent pleasure
to dwell on the thought of how good they would have been, if only we had
had a chance to try them, and had not forgotten that basket, and I never
can pass that portion of the garden without a reawakening of such
sentiments, and if any visitors happen to be with me taking occasion to
point out to them my mushroom-bed.
End of Project Gutenberg's Five Acres too Much, by Robert Barnwell Roosevelt