While our figures and illustrations in regard to the opening of a farm,
and the expenses attending thereon, have been as explicit and full as
our space would permit, still we regard them but as a basis for a
variety of similar calculations to be made by intending immigrants.
For instance, two friends might buy a breaking team between them, and
break, say twenty acres, on each one's farm. One could do the breaking,
while the other might be doing some other work.
In fact, each man's case has its own peculiar features, which he must
bring his own judgment to bear upon, and we don't pretend to have done
more than to have given him a good guide to assist him in his
calculations.
Twenty acres would be a pretty fair breaking for a poor man the first
year, and quite sufficient to enable him to support a small family. We
have farmers in the woods, now prosperous men, who for years had not
more than from five to ten acres cleared, for it is hard work to clear
heavy timbered land, and much easier to plant young trees than to cut
old ones down. But heretofore poor men were frequently deterred from
going on prairie land on account of the heavy expense attached to
fencing their tillage land. This was about the highest item of expense.
It is not so now, for in the counties in which our Catholic colonies are
situated, and in the adjoining counties,