RESULTS
From the moment my seeds began to show in tiny sprouts above the ground
until the full grown produce was safely garnered, I lived with a hoe
in my hands. Much to Hadley’s disgust I also kept a hoe in his hands
most of the time. I didn’t allow a weed either in my truck garden or my
potato patch ever to get more than two inches high. Instead of hoeing
once I hoed a half dozen times. The advantage of this is not so much
in keeping down the weeds as it is in stirring up the soil so that the
earth keeps fresh and alive and porous. Hadley was disgusted.
“Lawd-a-mighty,” he exclaimed, as we started for the potato patch with
hoes over our shoulders for the fourth cultivation, “ye’ll hoe your
stuff to death.”
“You wait and see the results,” I said.
“Ye b’lieve every darn thing them school teachers tell ye?”
“Pretty nearly,” I said.
“It’s all right for them to preach,” he said, “but I’ll bet a dollar to
a doughnut thet they’d quit preachin’ hoein’ mighty quick if ye gave
them this five-acre patch to hoe theirselves.”
But I was satisfied with results at the end of the first month. No one
could ask for hardier looking plants than I had. But Hadley was not
convinced even with this visible proof.
“They’ve grown spite of ye,” he said. “Anyhow the tarnation bugs will
eat ’em up afore you’re through. Always do.”
Doubtless they would if I had given my permission, but when I wasn’t
hoeing I was spraying with Paris Green. More than this I went around
with a tin can and knocked off into this all those bugs which did
succeed in reaching maturity. A couple of sprayings a season was the
most anyone around here ever did. So long as the bugs were kept down
enough not actually to kill the plants most people hereabout were
satisfied. I don’t believe an even hundred of the pests succeeded in
getting a square meal off my potatoes.
Now in all this I insist, and it’s evident on the face of it, that such
attention didn’t imply on my part any scientific knowledge of farming.
I did what I was told to do and did it thoroughly. I did what it seems
to me I should have known enough to do even if I hadn’t been told.
You can’t eat your cake and have it, too; you can’t let bugs eat your
potatoes and have your potatoes, too. It was queer sort of reasoning
that until now had convinced my neighbors that this was possible. They
had almost fatalistic theories about farming. They seemed to think
that the most any man could do was to plant his seed and then trust to
Providence for what might result. This pious faith in the bounty of the
Almighty was fundamentally of course merely an unconscious excuse for
their own laziness, but it seems to me it really must have been at the
root of their shiftlessness--an inheritance perhaps. Hadley was a fine
example of it. I gave up early in the season trying to inspire him even
with the help of the prizes. He did plant a few hills of corn but he
refused to hoe them more than once.
Now what I did myself, a large part of my neighbors were also doing in
a more or less earnest way. The young men I found were doing more than
the old men. The latter had taken advice in the matter of fertilizers
and seeds but it came hard to them to give the later attention to
their crops that I did. However, it was possible to see a general and
notable improvement even in this. The semi-monthly meetings did much to
spur them on and the noticeable results which followed their efforts
also did something more. Some of them remained skeptical, but both
Holt and myself insisted that they must keep at it until the end of
the season. We never missed a chance to dangle before their eyes the
prize money. Holt did one clever thing that had a very good effect. He
secured one hundred crisp new dollar bills and kept them displayed in
the window of Moulton’s grocery store with a sign over them which read:
“ONLY ONE OF THE TEN PRIZES.”
The display of so much money caught the eye of everyone who passed.
More than that about everyone in town who was competing went down and
had a look at it every so often. It acted like a tonic to many a man
who was getting disheartened by the amount of labor involved in the new
system.
Holt and I made a rough estimate of the land now under cultivation
that last year was idle and figured that it amounted to about one
hundred and eighty acres. In addition to this there was of course the
land that was always farmed to a more or less extent amounting to some
two hundred acres more. Out of this last lot there wasn’t an acre that
didn’t show improvement over the year before.
The new hundred and eighty acres counted for a lot more in value than
shows in the mere statement, because it included gardens for nearly
everyone in the village and this meant an actual saving in cash for
every householder from the moment the produce began to mature. Moulton
noted the effect of this when as usual he started to bring in early
vegetables from the city market. He had all he could do to get rid of
the first lot and after that gave it up. No one wanted city vegetables
with the prospect ahead of vegetables of their own. Martin, the local
butcher, also noticed the effect in a way he didn’t like. He was the
only man in the village who opposed us and he can’t be blamed, for his
meat sales began to fall off in June and dropped fifty per cent. during
July and August. With green peas to be had for the picking, followed
by string beans, new potatoes, green corn, turnips, parsnips, beets,
shell beans and what not, most people thought twice before paying him
forty cents a pound for rump steak. Personally I’d like to have seen
him put out of business, for he was a robber if ever there was one. He
had set me to wondering a long while before this why it wasn’t possible
for us to raise our own meat. With plenty of corn and hay upon which
to feed our cattle, with grazing ground for sheep, with practically
everyone able to keep his own pig on ordinary waste I didn’t see any
reason why in the end we shouldn’t make use of this opportunity. Our
forefathers raised whatever meat they needed and I believed we could do
it to-day. This was one of the things I resolved to bring up at one of
the fall meetings.
But when crops began to mature we were confronted with another and more
urgent problem. Just as soon as the green peas began to come along we
realized that we were face to face with the problem of distribution.
We had killed the local market, which was decidedly a good thing. In
one sense we hadn’t killed it, for now every man was supplying himself,
but we had killed it for our surplus. It didn’t take me long to see
that this would be wasted, for all that a majority of the individuals
themselves might do. The farmers were helpless partly because they had
no selling knowledge and partly because it was almost impossible for
them to get produce to the market and sell at a profit in small lots.
Holt and I made a round of the commission merchants in town and the
very best we could do with any of them was at a price forty per cent.
below retail. We figured that transportation would eat up another ten
per cent. which left the man who raised the crop some fifty per cent.
This was dead wrong on the face of it, but we didn’t have any time to
argue the point and it wouldn’t have done us any good if we had. As we
were now situated, fifty per cent. was better than nothing. However,
this opened my eyes to some of the reasons why in the suburbs we
couldn’t make both ends meet.
I called a special meeting of the club and told the members what I
had learned and outlined the plan Holt and I had devised to save what
we could. The situation had come unexpectedly and was due of course
to our ignorance. We didn’t realize it at the time but as it happened
this crisis was the best thing that could have come about. It forced
us on the spur of the moment and at the psychological moment into a
plan that promised to develop big things in the end; the coöperative
selling plan. I proposed that every member of the club should gather
early each morning such things as were fit for the market over what he
couldn’t use himself and bring them to my barn. There the produce would
be measured and sorted and each man given a credit slip. A committee
of three was to be appointed by the club to oversee without pay this
work for a week. The committee would hire a team to transport the goods
to the early train which left at five fifteen. At the end of each week
an accounting would be made, the cost of transportation deducted and
profits distributed pro rata. I offered to look after the bookkeeping
myself if the club so desired and at the next meeting this task was
delegated to me.
Now it is possible that in advance of the present urgent situation
which demanded that they accept this or nothing, a minority at least
might have viewed this scheme with suspicion. They were not used to
doing things in a body and the novelty of it, like all novelties, might
have frightened them. As it was, the plan was received with instant
enthusiasm and when put to a vote carried without a single dissenting
voice. Anyway if a man disapproved all he had to do was not to bring
in his produce. The action of the club didn’t bind a man to anything
except to abide by results if he chose to contribute his stuff.
We appointed three men to appear at my barn at four o’clock the next
morning. They turned up on time and by four-fifteen the produce began
to arrive. Everyone brought what he had, whether it was a bushel
of sweet corn, a peck of beans, a dozen heads of lettuce, a half
dozen cucumbers or a barrel of apples or potatoes. In most cases the
individual lots didn’t amount to much but collectively we made a good
showing that first morning. We had enough to fill a two horse load. I
went to the station and supervised the loading myself and then went
on to the market with it. Barnes, the commission man, looked it over
and admitted that he was well pleased on his part with the venture.
At the end of the first week I received a check for four hundred and
eighty-three dollars and sixty-five cents--not in itself a large amount
or as much as it should have been, but when considered as money,
a large per cent. of which would otherwise have gone to waste, a
creditable showing.
And really the working out of the scheme as it continued from week to
week was wonderfully simple. There was nothing either difficult or
complicated about it. The three men appointed every week gave about
two hours of their time for six days which in no way interfered with
their farm duties. They all looked upon their selection as an honor and
rather enjoyed their position.
Nor was my part of it burdensome. I received an itemized accounting
from Barnes and had nothing to do but divide these items as the dated
credit slips were produced. I didn’t even have to do that, for Ruth
did the figuring herself. Before the end of the season we found we had
handled thirty-eight hundred dollars, but this included the apple and
potato crop which went through us. And there wasn’t a single kick or
complaint heard during the whole business.
In the meantime, as the end of the season approached, the matter of
the prize distribution loomed big. I wanted to make the most of that
event. I wanted it to be a big spectacular finish that would cling in
the minds of all during the ensuing winter. The committee held several
meetings to discuss the best way of doing this and we finally hit upon
the idea of an old-time country fair. There hadn’t been one in town for
twenty years because the last ones held had degenerated into nothing
but two-cent horse races in which the prizes had all been carried off
by semi-professionals. The chief objection to the plan was the lack of
fair grounds. The old society had gone into bankruptcy and sold off
what property it had and the grounds had since then grown up to scrub
pine. Ruth solved the difficulty by suggesting that we go back again
to the early days for our idea. Originally the fairs were held on the
village green. In fact, in parts of New England they still are to-day.
Her idea was to revive this custom in our town.
The idea had several advantages, not the least of which was that it
incurred no expense, and met with instant approval. We appointed a
committee to look after the details, a second committee to arrange a
field day for the youngsters, and a third committee with Ruth at its
head to arrange some sort of entertainment for the women.
“You mustn’t leave them out,” Ruth insisted. “They play a more
important part in this work than you imagine.”
We had arranged with the Agricultural School to send down men to act
as judges so that everything should be judged impartially. A man had
come down just before the haying season and had overseen the weighing
on the town scales of all hay entered for the competition. Quality and
quantity were the two things taken into account for the best crop on
land already used for that purpose, while the prize for the best crop
on reclaimed land required a somewhat nicer judgment. The nature of the
land here had to be considered. When the expert had completed his work
he made his report and placed it in a sealed envelope which was not to
be opened until the public award.
This same method was used in making the awards for the most notable
improvement in orchards, for the best corn crop and the best potato
crop. As for the other prizes the committee itself acted as judges.
The results here were a matter of self-evident facts. In the live
stock competition each man was required to show a receipted bill for
all money expended and a record of some sort for all money received.
The garden competition had to be judged in a more general way, as it
was observed by the committee during the entire season. I had put a
good deal of time into this myself and it had been a genuine pleasure.
There was hardly a family in the village who didn’t have a garden
of some sort that year, for even those who didn’t intend to compete
caught the contagion and planted something. I wish there had been some
way of computing the saving in cash that resulted from this alone. It
certainly amounted to a good many times the money which had inspired
the movement. It seems almost impossible of belief that to many
residents of this country village the raising of their own green stuff
was a decided novelty. But such is the fact. With a man coming daily
to the door, as until this season Tony and others had done, with peas,
lettuce, corn, cucumbers and what not, people had bought of him as a
matter of convenience. It had cost them only a little at a time and
they hadn’t realized to how much the sum total amounted.
I know that Ruth and I found a big difference in our household expenses
once the garden began to bear. Not only this but we did away with meat
almost entirely and never lived so well in our lives. In addition to
what I used myself I loaded down Dick’s machine every morning with such
stuff as couldn’t be put away for winter use, to be distributed among
members of the gang--among families with children or those temporarily
in hard luck through sickness. Moulton was certainly mistaken when he
had prophesied that it would cost me more to raise than buy my own
vegetables. But he hadn’t planned on any such modern methods as I and
the whole village used that season.
* * * * *
As the day for the fair grew nearer the town became on edge with
excitement. Here was a holiday which appealed to everyone, whether
farmer or not. It brought the whole village together as a unit. I was
surprised to find how much local spirit really existed below all the
apparent indifference. I found there wasn’t a man or woman who didn’t
have some town pride, however slight. The trouble was that they seldom
had an opportunity to express it. Holt kept up a running fire of
comment in the local paper, which was glad to give us all the space
we wished. It made the most readable and inexpensive copy they had
received for a long time. We also got out posters and distributed them
among the neighboring towns, bidding everyone come as guests of the
village. Every merchant decorated his store a week in advance and the
Woodmen band in anticipation of the event practiced new pieces every
night.
Ruth secured the town hall for the women and arranged there for an
exhibition of New England cooking, preserving and needle work, which
instantly gave the women an active interest in the undertaking. She
also arranged to serve here a free lunch of coffee, sandwiches and
cakes to out-of-town visitors. Her committee decorated the interior of
the old building with wild flowers and flowers from the home gardens,
with a background of evergreens gathered by the small boys.
We received requests for street privileges from a number of fakirs
and sold these for enough to purchase settees to go around the band
stand. We used some care, however, in giving out our permits and barred
all gambles of whatever kind. About a dozen came into town the day
before and erected their booths which gave the village still more of
a holiday aspect. That night there wasn’t a livelier village in the
State. It was so full of anticipation that I don’t believe more than
half the population got their full night’s sleep for the first time in
twenty years.
“Are we dead yet?” demanded Holt of Ruth as he prepared to leave us
long after midnight and after being up since four A. M.
“Some of you will be if you don’t go right home this minute and get
some sleep,” she answered.