THE PROSE OF NEW ENGLAND FARM LIFE
A life whose parlors have always been closed.
IK MARVEL.
Sunshine is tabooed in the front room of the house. The “damp
dignity” of the best-room has been well described: “Musty smells,
stiffness, angles, absence of sunlight. What is there to talk about
in a room dark as the Domdaniel, except where one crack in a
reluctant shutter reveals a stand of wax flowers under glass, and a
dimly descried hostess who evidently waits only your departure to
extinguish that solitary ray?”
At a recent auction I obtained twenty-one volumes of State Agricultural
Reports for seventeen cents; and what I read in them of the Advantages
of Rural Pursuits, The Dignity of Labor, The Relation of Agriculture
to Longevity and to Nations, and, above all, of the Golden Egg, seem
decidedly florid, unpractical, misleading, and very little permanent
popularity can be gained by such self-interested buncombe from these
eloquent orators.
The idealized farmer, as he is depicted by these white-handed
rhetoricians who, like John Paul, “would never lay hand to a plow,
unless said plow should actually pursue him to a second story, and
then lay hands on it only to throw it out of the window,” and the
phlegmatic, overworked, horny-handed tillers of the soil are no more
alike than Fenimore Cooper’s handsome, romantic, noble, and impressive
red man of the forest and the actual Sioux or Apache, as regarded by
the cowboy of the West.
It’s all work, with no play and no proper pay, for Western competition
now prevents all chance of decent profits. Little can be laid up for
old age, except by the most painful economy and daily scrimping; and
how can the children consent to stay on, starving body and soul?
_That_ explains the 3,318 abandoned farms in Maine at present. And the
farmers’ wives! what monotonous, treadmill lives! Constant toil with no
wages, no allowance, no pocket money, no vacations, no pleasure trips
to the city nearest them, little of the pleasures of correspondence;
no time to write, unless a near relative is dead or dying. Some one
says that their only chance for social life is in going to some insane
asylum! There have been four cases of suicide in farmers’ families near
me within eighteen months.
This does not apply to the fortunate farmer who inherited money and is
shrewd enough to keep and increase it. Nor to the market gardener, who
raises vegetables under glass; nor to the owners of large nurseries.
These do make a good living, and are also able to save something.
In general, it is all one steady rush of work from March to November;
unceasing, uncomplaining activity for the barest support, followed by
three months of hibernation and caring for the cattle. Horace Greeley
said: “If our most energetic farmers would abstract ten hours each
per week from their incessant drudgery and devote them to reading and
reflection in regard to their noble calling, they would live to a
better purpose and bequeath better examples to their children.”
It may have been true long years ago that no shares, factory, bank,
or railroad paid better dividends than the plowshare, but it is the
veriest nonsense now.
Think of the New England climate in summer. Rufus Choate describes it
eloquently: “Take the climate of New England in summer, hot to-day,
cold to-morrow, mercury at eighty degrees in the shade in the morning,
with a sultry wind southwest. In three hours more a sea turn, wind at
east, a thick fog from the bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty
degrees. Now so dry as to kill all the beans in New Hampshire, then
floods carrying off all the dams and bridges on the Penobscot and
Androscoggin. Snow in Portsmouth in July, and the next day a man and
a yoke of oxen killed by lightning in Rhode Island. You would think
the world was coming to an end. But we go along. Seed time and harvest
never fail. We have the early and the latter rains; the sixty days of
hot corn weather are pretty sure to be measured out to us; the Indian
summer, with its bland south winds and mitigated sunshine, brings all
up, and about the 25th of November, being Thursday, a grateful people
gather about the Thanksgiving board, with hearts full of gratitude for
the blessings that have been vouchsafed to them.”
Poets love to sing of the sympathy of Nature. I think she is decidedly
at odds with the farming interests of the country. At any rate, her
antipathy to me was something intense and personal. That mysterious
stepmother of ours was really riled by my experiments and determined to
circumvent every agricultural ambition.
She detailed a bug for every root, worms to build nests on every tree,
others to devour every leaf, insects to attack every flower, drought or
deluge to ruin the crops, grasshoppers to finish everything that was
left.
Potato bugs swooped down on my fields by tens of thousands, and when
somewhat thinned in ranks by my unceasing war, would be re-enforced
from a neighbor’s fields, once actually fording my lakelet to get to
my precious potato patch. The number and variety of devouring pests
connected with each vegetable are alarming. Here are a few connected
closely with the homely cabbage, as given by a noted helminthologist
under the head of “Cut-worms”:
“Granulated,” “shagreened,” “white,” “marked,” “greasy,” “glassy,”
“speckled,” “variegated,” “wavy,” “striped,” “harlequin,” “imbricated,”
“tarnished.” The “snout beetle” is also a deadly foe.
To realize this horror, this worse than Pharaoh plague, you must either
try a season of farming or peruse octavo volumes on Insects injurious
to Vegetation, fully illustrated.
In those you may gain a faint idea of the “skippers,” “stingers,”
“soothsayers,” “walking sticks or specters,” “saw flies and slugs,”
“boring caterpillars,” “horn-tailed wood wasps,” etc., etc., etc.,
etc., etc.—a never-ending list. The average absolute loss of the
farmers of this country from such pests is fully one million dollars
per annum.
Gail Hamilton said of her squashes:
“They appeared above-ground, large-lobed and vigorous. Large and
vigorous appeared the bugs, all gleaming in green and gold, like the
wolf on the fold, and stopped up all the stomata and ate up all the
parenchyma, till my squash-leaves looked as if they had grown for the
sole purpose of illustrating net-veined organizations. A universal bug
does not indicate a special want of skill in any one.”
Not liking to crush the bug between thumb and finger as advised, she
tried drowning them. She says: “The moment they touched the water they
all spread unseen wings and flew away. I should not have been much more
surprised to see Halicarnassus soaring over the ridge pole. I had not
the slightest idea they could fly.”
Then the aphides! Exhausters of strength—vine fretters—plant
destroyers! One aphis, often the progenitor of over five thousand
million aphides in a single season. This seems understated, but I
accept it as the aphidavit of another noted helminthologist. I might
have imagined Nature had a special grudge against me if I had not
recalled Emerson’s experience. He says: “With brow bent, with firm
intent, I go musing in the garden walk. I stoop to pick up a weed that
is choking the corn, find there were two; close behind is a third, and
I reach out my arm to a fourth; behind that there are four thousand and
one!
“Rose bugs and wasps appear best when flying. I admired them most when
flying away from my garden.”
Horace Greeley said that “No man who harbors caterpillars has any moral
right to apples.” But one sees whole orchards destroyed in this way
for lack of time to attack such a big job. Farmers have been unjustly
attacked by city critics who do not understand the situation. There was
much fine writing last year in regard to the sin and shame of cutting
down the pretty, wild growth of shrubs, vines, and flowers along the
wayside, so picturesque to the summer tourist. The tangle of wild
grape, clematis, and woodbine is certainly pretty, but underneath is
sure to be found a luxuriant growth of thistle, wild carrot, silk weed,
mullein, chickweed, tansy, and plantain, which, if allowed to seed and
disseminate themselves, would soon ruin the best farms. There is a
deadly foe, an army of foes, hiding under these luxuriant festoons and
masses of cheerful flowers.
Isn’t it strange and sad and pitiful, that it is the summer guest who
alone enjoys the delights of summering in the country? There is no time
for rest, for recreation, for flowers, for outdoor pleasures, for the
average farmer and his family. You seldom see any bright faces at the
windows, which are seldom opened—only a glimpse here and there of a
sad, haggard creature, peering out for curosity. Strange would it be to
hear peals of merry laughter; stranger still to see a family enjoying
a meal on the piazza or a game on the grass. As for flowers, they are
valued no more than weeds; the names of the most common are unknown. I
asked in vain a dozen people last summer, what that flower was called,
pointing to the ubiquitous Joe Rye weed or pink motherwort. At last I
asked one man, who affected to know everything—
“Oh, yes, I know it.”
“What is it?” I persisted.
“Well, I know it just as well, but can’t just now get the name out.” A
pause, then, with great superiority: “I’d rather see a potato field in
full bloom, than all the flowers in the world.”
Perhaps some of Tolstoi’s disciples may yet solve the problem of New
England’s abandoned farms. He believes that every able-bodied man
should labor with his own hands and in “the sweat of his brow” to
produce his own living direct from the soil. He dignifies agriculture
above all other means of earning a living, and would have artificial
employments given up. “Back to the land,” he cries; and back he really
goes, daily working with the peasants. But ’tis a solemn, almost
tragical experience, not much better than the fate of the Siberian
exile. Rise at dawn; work till dark; eat—go to bed too tired to read a
paper;—and no money in it.
Let these once prosperous farms be given up to Swedish colonies, hard
working and industrious, who can do better here than in their own
country and have plenty of social life among themselves, or let wealthy
men purchase half a dozen of these places to make a park, or two score
for a hunting ground—or let unattached women of middle age occupy them
and support themselves by raising poultry. Men are making handsome
incomes from this business—women can do the same. The language of the
poultry magazines, by the way, is equally sentimental and efflorescent
with that of the speeches at agricultural fairs, sufficiently so to
sicken one who has once accepted it as reliable, as for instance: “The
individual must be very abnormal in his tastes if they can not be
catered to by our feathered tribe.” “To their owner they are a thing of
beauty and a joy forever. Their ways are interesting, their language
fascinating, and their lives from the egg to the mature fowl replete
with constant surprises.”[1]
[Footnote 1: This clause is true.]
“To simply watch them as they pass from stage to stage of development
fills the mind of every sane person with pleasure.” One poultry crank
insists that each hen must be so carefully studied that she can be
understood and managed as an individual, and speaks of his hens having
at times an “anxious nervous expression!”
“Yes, it is where the hens sing all the day long in the barn-yard that
throws off the stiff ways of our modern civilization and makes us feel
that we are home and can rest and play and grow young once more. How
many men and women have regained lost health and spirits in keeping
hens, in the excitement of finding and gathering eggs!”
“It is not the natural laying season when snows lie deep on field and
hill, when the frost tingles in sparkling beads from every twig, when
the clear streams bear up groups of merry skaters,” etc.
After my pathetic experience with chickens, who after a few days of
downy content grew ill, and gasped until they gave up the ghost;
ducklings, who progressed finely for several weeks, then turned over
on their backs and flopped helplessly unto the end; or, surviving
that critical period, were found in the drinking trough, “drowned,
dead, because they couldn’t keep their heads above water”; turkeys who
flourished to a certain age, then grew feeble and phantom-like and
faded out of life, I weary of gallinaceous rhodomontade, and crave
“pointers” for my actual needs.
I still read “Crankin’s” circulars with a thrill of enthusiasm because
his facts are so cheering. For instance, from his latest: “We have
some six thousand ducklings out now, confined in yards with wire
netting eighteen inches high. The first lot went to market May 10th
and netted forty cents per pound. These ducklings were ten weeks old
and dressed on an average eleven pounds per pair. One pair dressed
fourteen pounds.” Isn’t that better than selling milk at two and a half
cents per quart? And no money can be made on vegetables unless they
are raised under glass in advance of the season. I know, for did I not
begin with “pie plant,” with which every market was glutted, at one
cent per pound, and try the entire list, with disgustingly low prices,
exposed to depressing comparison and criticism? When endeavoring to
sell, one of the visiting butchers, in reply to my petition that he
would buy some of my vegetables, said: “Well now, Marm, you see just
how it is; I’ve got more’n I can sell now, and women keep offering more
all the way along. I tell ’em I can’t buy ’em, but I’ll _haul ’em off
for ye_ if ye want to get rid of ’em!” So much for market gardening at
a distance from city demands.
But ducks! Sydney Smith, at the close of his life, said he “had but
one illusion left, and that was the Archbishop of Canterbury.” I still
believe in Crankin and duck raising. Let me see: “One pair dressed
fourteen pounds, netted forty cents per pound.” I’ll order one of
Crankin’s “Monarch” incubators and begin a poultry farm anew.
“_Dido et dux_,” and so do Boston epicures. I’ll sell at private sales,
not for hotels! I used to imagine myself supplying one of the large
hotels and saw on the _menu_:
“Tame duck and apple sauce (from the famous ‘Breezy Meadows’ farm).”
But I inquired of one of the proprietors what he would give, and
“fifteen cents per pound for poultry dressed and delivered” gave me a
combined attack of chills and hysterics.
Think of _my_ chickens, from those prize hens (three dollars each)—_my_
chickens, fed on eggs hard boiled, milk, Indian meal, cracked corn,
sun-flower seed, oats, buckwheat, the best of bread, selling at fifteen
cents per pound, and I to pay express charges! Is there, is there any
“money in hens?”
To show how a child would revel in a little rational enjoyment on a
farm, read this dear little poem of James Whitcomb Riley’s:
AT AUNTY’S HOUSE.
One time when we’s at aunty’s house—
’Way in the country—where
They’s ist but woods and pigs and cows,
An’ all’s outdoors and air!
An orchurd swing; an’ churry trees,
An’ _churries_ in ’em! Yes, an’ these
Here red-head birds steal all they please
An’ tech ’em if you dare!
W’y wunst, one time when we wuz there,
_We et out on the porch!_
Wite where the cellar door wuz shut
The table wuz; an’ I
Let aunty set by me an’ cut
My wittles up—an’ pie.
Tuz awful funny! I could see
The red heads in the churry tree;
An’ bee-hives, where you got to be
So keerful going by;
An’ comp’ny there an’ all! An’ we—
_We et out on the porch!_
An’—I ist et _p’surves_ an’ things
’At ma don’t ’low me to—
An’ chickun gizzurds (don’t like wings
Like parunts does, do you?)
An’ all the time the wind blowed there
An’ I could feel it in my hair,
An’ ist smell clover ever’where!
An’ a old red head flew
Purt’ nigh wite over my high chair,
_When we et out on the porch!_