TEN ACRES ENOUGH:
A PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE,
SHOWING
HOW A VERY SMALL FARM MAY BE MADE TO
KEEP A VERY LARGE FAMILY.
WITH
Extensive and Profitable Experience
IN
THE CULTIVATION OF THE SMALLER FRUITS.
EIGHTH EDITION.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY JAMES MILLER,
(SUCCESSOR TO C. S. FRANCIS & CO.,)
522 BROADWAY.
MDCCCLXVI.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864,
BY JAMES MILLER,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
The man who feeds his cattle on a thousand hills may possibly see the
title of this little volume paraded through the newspapers; but the
chances are that he will never think it worth while to look into the
volume itself. The owner of a hundred acres will scarcely step out of
his way to purchase or to borrow it, while the lord of every smaller
farm will be sure it is not intended for him. Few persons belonging to
these several classes have been educated to believe Ten Acres Enough.
Born to greater ambition, they have aimed higher and grasped at more,
sometimes wisely, sometimes not. Many of these are now owning or
cultivating more land than their heads or purses enable them to manage
properly. Had their ambition been moderate, and their ideas more
practical, their labor would be better rewarded, and this book, without
doubt, would have found more readers.
The mistaken ambition for owning twice as much land as one can
thoroughly manure or profitably cultivate, is the great agricultural sin
of this country. Those who commit it, by beginning wrong, too frequently
continue wrong. Owning many acres is the sole idea. High cultivation of
a small tract, is one of which they have little knowledge. Too many in
these several classes think they know enough. They measure a man’s
knowledge by the number of his acres. Hence, in their eyes the owner of
a plot so humble as mine must know so little as to be unable to teach
them any thing new.
Happily, it is not for these that I write, and hence it would be
unreasonable to expect them to become readers. I write more particularly
for those who have not been brought up as farmers--for that numerous
body of patient toilers in city, town, and village, who, like myself,
have struggled on from year to year, anxious to break away from the
bondage of the desk, the counter, or the workshop, to realize in the
country even a moderate income, so that it be a sure one. Many such are
constantly looking round in this direction for something which, with
less mental toil and anxiety, will provide a maintenance for a growing
family, and afford a refuge for advancing age--some safe and quiet
harbor, sheltered from the constantly recurring monetary and political
convulsions which in this country so suddenly reduce men to poverty. But
these inquirers find no experienced pioneers to lead the way, and they
turn back upon themselves, too fearful to go forward alone. Books of
personal experience like this are rare. This is written for the
information of the class referred to, for men not only willing, but
anxious to learn. Once in the same predicament myself, I know their
longings, their deficiencies, and the steps they ought to take. Hence,
in seeking to make myself fully understood, some may think that I have
been unnecessarily minute. But in setting forth my own crudities, I do
but save others from repeating them. Yet with all this amplification, my
little contribution will occasion no crowding even upon a book-shelf
which may be already filled.
I am too new a farmer to be the originator of all the ideas which are
here set forth. Some, which seemed to be appropriate to the topic in
hand, have been incorporated with the argument as it progressed; while
in some instances, even the language of writers, whose names were
unknown to me, has also been adopted.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Chapter I.--City Experiences--Moderate Expectations 9
CHAPTER II.--Practical Views--Safety of Investments in Land 15
CHAPTER III.--Resolved to go--Escape from Business--Choosing a
Location 22
CHAPTER IV.--Buying a Farm--Anxiety to sell--Forced to quit 29
CHAPTER V.--Making a Purchase--First Impressions 37
CHAPTER VI.--Planting a Peach-orchard--How to preserve Peach-trees 42
CHAPTER VII.--Planting Raspberries and Strawberries--Tricks of
the Nursery 53
CHAPTER VIII.--Blackberries--A Remarkable Coincidence 60
CHAPTER IX.--The Garden--Female Management--Comforts and Profits 69
CHAPTER X.--Cheated in a Cow--A Good and a Bad One--The Saint of
the Barnyard 76
CHAPTER XI.--A Cloud of Weeds--Great Sales of Plants 86
CHAPTER XII.--Pigs and Poultry--Luck and Ill Luck 98
CHAPTER XIII.--City and Country Life contrasted 110
CHAPTER XIV.--Two Acres in Truck--Revolution in Agriculture 118
CHAPTER XV.--Birds, and the Services they Render 131
CHAPTER XVI.--Close of my First Year--Its Loss and Gain 141
CHAPTER XVII.--My Second Year--Trenching the Garden--Strawberry
Profits 148
CHAPTER XVIII.--Raspberries--The Lawtons 167
CHAPTER XIX.--Liquid Manures--An Illustration 177
CHAPTER XX.--My Third Year--Liquid Manure--Three Years’ Results 188
CHAPTER XXI.--A Barnyard Manufactory--Land Enough--Faith in Manure 200
CHAPTER XXII.--Profits of Fruit-growing--The Trade in Berries 212
CHAPTER XXIII.--Gentleman-farming--Establishing a Home 230
CHAPTER XXIV.--Unsuccessful Men--Rebellion not Ruinous to Northern
Agriculture 238
CHAPTER XXV.--Where to Locate--East or West 248
TEN ACRES ENOUGH.
CHAPTER I.
CITY EXPERIENCES--MODERATE EXPECTATIONS.
My life, up to the age of forty, had been spent in my native city of
Philadelphia. Like thousands of others before me, I began the world
without a dollar, and with a very few friends in a condition to assist
me. Having saved a few hundred dollars by dint of close application to
business, and avoiding taverns, oyster-houses, theatres, and fashionable
tailors, I married and went into business the same year. These two
contemporaneous drafts upon my little capital proving heavier than I
expected, they soon used it up, leaving me thereafter greatly straitened
for means. It is true my business kept me, but as it was constantly
expanding, and was of such a nature that a large proportion of my annual
gain was necessarily invested in tools, fixtures, and machinery, I was
nearly always short of ready cash to carry on my operations with
comfort. At certain times, also, it ceased to be profitable. The crisis
of 1837 nearly ruined me, and I was kept struggling along during the
five succeeding years of hard times, until the revival of 1842 came
round. Previous to this crisis, necessity had driven me to the banks for
discounts, one of the sore evils of doing business upon insufficient
capital. As is always the case with these institutions, they compelled
me to return the borrowed money at the very time it was least convenient
for me to do so--they needed it as urgently as myself. But to refund
them I was compelled to borrow elsewhere, and that too at excessive
rates of interest, thus increasing the burden while laboring to shake it
off.
Thousands have gone through the same unhappy experience, and been
crushed by the load. Such can anticipate my trials and privations. Yet I
was not insolvent. My property had cost me far more than I owed, yet if
offered for sale at a time when the whole community seemed to want money
only, no one could have been found to give cost. I could not use it as
the basis of a loan, neither could I part with it without abandoning my
business. Hence I struggled on through that exhausting crisis, haunted
by perpetual fears of being dishonored at bank,--lying down at night,
not to peaceful slumber, but to dream of fresh expedients to preserve my
credit for to-morrow. I have sometimes thought that the pecuniary cares
of that struggle were severe enough to have shortened my life, had they
been much longer protracted.
Besides the mental anxieties they occasioned, they compelled a pinching
economy in my family. But in this latter effort I discovered my wife to
be a jewel of priceless value, coming up heroically to the task, and
relieving me of a world of care. Without her aid, her skill, her
management, her uncomplaining cheerfulness, her sympathy in struggles so
inadequately rewarded as mine were, I should have sunk into utter
bankruptcy. Her economy was not the mean, penny-wise, pound foolish
policy which many mistake for true economy. It was the art of
calculation joined to the habit of order, and the power of proportioning
our wishes to the means of gratifying them. The little pilfering temper
of a wife is despicable and odious to every man of sense; but there is a
judicious, graceful economy, which has no connection with an avaricious
temper, and which, as it depends upon the understanding, can be expected
only from cultivated minds. Women who have been well educated, far from
despising domestic duties, will hold them in high respect, because they
will see that the whole happiness of life is made up of the happiness of
each particular day and hour, and that much of the enjoyment of these
must depend upon the punctual practice of virtues which are more
valuable than splendid.
If I survived that crisis, it was owing to my wife’s admirable
management of my household expenses. She saw that our embarrassment was
due to no imprudence or neglect of mine. She thus consented to severe
privations, uttering no complaint, hinting no reproach, never
disheartened, and so rarely out of humor that she never failed to
welcome my return with a smile.
But in this country one convulsion follows another with disheartening
frequency. I lived through that of 1837, paid my debts, and had managed
to save some money. My wife’s system of economy had been so long adhered
to, that in the end it became to some extent habitual to her, and she
still continued to practise great frugality. I became insensibly
accustomed to it myself. Children were multiplying around us, and we
thought the skies had brightened for all future time. When in
difficulty, we had often debated the propriety of quitting the city and
its terrible business trials, and settling on a few acres in the
country, where we could raise our own food, and spend the remainder of
our days in cultivating ground which would be sure to yield us at least
a respectable subsistence. We had no longing for excessive wealth: a
mere competency, though earned by daily toil, so that it was reasonably
sure, and free from the drag of continued indebtedness to others, was
all we coveted.
I had always loved the country, but my wife preferred the city. I could
take no step but such as would be likely to promote her happiness. So
long as times continued fair, we ceased to canvass the propriety of a
removal. We had children to educate, and to her the city seemed the best
and most convenient place for qualifying them for future usefulness.
Then, most of our relations resided near us. Our habits were eminently
social. We had made numerous friends, and among our neighbors there had
turned up many valuable families. We felt even the thought of breaking
away from all these cordial ties to be a trying one. But the refuge of a
removal to the country had taken strong hold of my mind.
Indeed, it may be said that I was born with a passion for living on a
farm. It was fixed and strengthened by my long experience of the
business vicissitudes of city life. For many years I had been a constant
subscriber for several agricultural journals, whose contents I read as
carefully as I did those of the daily papers. My wife also, being a
great reader, came in time to study them almost as attentively. Every
thing I saw in them only tended to confirm my longing for the country,
while they gave definite views of what kind of farming I was fit for. In
fact they educated me for the position before I assumed it. I am sure
they exercised a powerful influence in removing most of my wife’s
objections to living in the country. I studied their contents as
carefully as did the writers who prepared them. I watched the reports of
crops, of experiments, and of profits. The leading idea in my mind was
this--that a man of ordinary industry and intelligence, by choosing a
proper location within hourly reach of a great city market, could so
cultivate a few acres as to insure a maintenance for his family, free
from the ruinous vibrations of trade or commerce in the metropolis. All
my reading served to convince me of its soundness. I did not assume that
he could get rich on the few acres which I ever expected to own; but I
felt assured that he could place himself above want. I knew that his
peace of mind would be sure. With me this was dearer than all. My
reading had satisfied me that such a man would find Ten Acres Enough,
and these I could certainly command.
As I did not contemplate undertaking the management of a large grain
farm, so my studies did not run in that direction. Yet I read every
thing that came before me in relation to such, and not without profit.
But I graduated my views to my means, and so noted with the utmost care
the experiences of the small cultivators who farmed five to ten acres
thoroughly. I noted their failures as watchfully as their successes,
knowing that the former were to be avoided, as the latter were to be
imitated. As opportunity offered, I made repeated excursions, year after
year, in every direction around Philadelphia, visiting the small farmers
or truckers who supplied the city market with fruit and vegetables,
examining, inquiring, and treasuring up all that I saw and heard. The
fund of knowledge thus acquired was not only prodigious, but it has been
of lasting value to me in my subsequent operations. I found multitudes
of truckers who were raising large families on five acres of ground,
while others, owning only thirty acres, had become rich.
On most of these numerous excursions I was careful to have my wife with
me. I wanted her to see and hear for herself, and by convincing her
judgment, to overcome her evidently diminishing reluctance to leaving
the city. My uniform consideration for her comfort at last secured the
object I had in view. She saw so many homes in which a quiet abundance
was found, so many contented men and women, so many robust and bouncing
children, that long before I was ready to leave the city, she was quite
impatient to be gone.