FARMERS AND FARMING SCENES IN THE WEST.
If any one goes to Holland they are all Dutch farmers there; if he goes to England he finds British husbandry; in New England it’s all Yankee farming. A man must go to the West to see a little of every sort of farming that ever existed, and some sorts we will affirm, never had an existence before anywhere else—the purely indigenous farming of the great valley. Within an hour’s ride of each other is the Swiss with his vineyard, the Dutchman with his spade, the “Pennsylvany Dutch” and his barn, the Yankee and his notions, the Kentuckian and his stock, the Irishman and his shillelah, the Welchman and his cheese, besides the supple French and smooth Italian, with here and there a Swede and a very good sprinkling of Indians.
Away yonder to the right is a little patch of thirty acres owned by a Yankee. He keeps good cows, one horse only (fat enough for half a dozen); every hour of the year, save only nights and Sabbath-days he is at work, and neat fences, clean door-yard, a nice barn, good crops, and a profitable dairy, and money at interest, show the results. What if he has but thirty acres, they are worth any two hundred around him, if what a man makes is a criterion of the value of his farm. But a little farther out is a jolly old Kentucky farmer, the owner of about five hundred acres of the best land in the county, which he tills when he has nothing else
to do. He is a great hunter and must go out for three or four days every season after deer. He loves office quite well, and is always willing to “serve the public” for a consid-er-a-tion, as Trapbois would say. As to farming, he hires more than he works; but, now and then, as at planting or harvesting, he will lay hold for a week or a month with perfect farming fury, and that’s the last of it. As to working every day and every hour, it would be intolerable! He is a great horse-raiser, is fond of stock, and if a free and easy fellow ready to laugh, not careful of his purse, nor particular about his time, will ride over his grounds, admire his cattle, his bluegrass pasture, his Pattons and his Durhams; and above all, that blooded filly, or that colt of Sir Archie’s—our Kentucky farmer will declare him the finest fellow alive, and his house will be open to him from year’s end to year’s end again.
Right along side of him is a “Pennsylvany Dutch,” good-natured, laborious, frugal and prosperous. He minds his own business. Seldom wrangles for office. Is not very public spirited, although he likes very well to see things prosper. He farms carefully on the old approved plan of his father, plants by the signs in the moon, seldom changes his habits, and on the whole constitutes a very substantial, clean, industrious, but unenterprising farmer.
Then there is a New York Yankee; he has got a grand piece of land, has paid for it, and got money to boot; he knows a little about everything; he “lays off” the timber for a fine large house—bossed the job himself. When it was up he stuck on a kitchen, then a pantry on to that, then a pump-room on that, then a wood-house on that, and then a smoke-house for the fag end; a fine garden, a snug little nursery well tended, good orchards; by and by a second farm, pretty soon a boy on it, all married and fixed off; by and by again another snug little farm, and then another boy on it, with a little wife to help him; and then a spruce young fellow is seen about the premises, and after a while
a daughter disappears and may be found some miles off on a good farm, making butter and raising children, and has good luck at both. The old man is getting fat, has money lent out, loves to see his friends, house neat as a pin, glorious place to visit, etc., etc. But who can tell how many sorts more there are in the great heterogeneous West, and how amusing the mixture often is, and what strange customs grow out of the mingling of so many diverse materials. It is like a kaleidoscope, every turn gives a new sight. We will take our leisure, and give some sketches of men, and manners and scenery, as we have seen them in the West.
About eight years ago a raw Dutchman, whose only English was a good-natured yes to every possible question, got employment here as a stable-man. His wages were six dollars and board; that was $36 in six months, for not one cent did he spend. He washed his own shirt and stockings, mended and patched his own breeches, paid for his tobacco by some odd jobs, and laid by his wages. The next six months, being now able to talk “goot Inglish,” he obtained eight dollars a month, and at the end of six months more had $48, making in all for the year $84. The second year, by varying his employment—sawing wood in winter, working for the corporation in summer, making garden in spring, he laid by $100, and the third year $125, making in three years $309.
With this he bought 80 acres of land. It was as wild as when the deer fled over it, and the Indian pursued him. How should he get a living while clearing it? Thus he did it. He hires a man to clear and fence ten acres. He himself remains in town to earn the money to pay for the clearing. Behold him! already risen a degree, he is an employer! In two years’ time he has twenty acres well cleared, a log-house and stable, and money enough to buy stock and tools. He now rises another step in the world, for he gets married, and with his amply-built, broad-faced,
good-natured wife, he gives up the town and is a regular farmer.
In Germany he owned nothing and never could; his wages were nominal, his diet chiefly vegetable, and his prospect was, that he would be obliged to labor as a menial for life, barely earning a subsistence and not leaving enough to bury him. In five years, he has become the owner in fee simple of a good farm, with comfortable fixtures, a prospect of rural wealth, an independent life, and, by the blessing of heaven and his wife, of an endless posterity. Two words tell the whole story—Industry and Economy. These two words will make any man rich at the West.
We know of another case. While Gesenius, the world-wide famous Hebrew scholar, was as school, he had a bench-fellow named Eitlegeorge. I know nothing of his former life. But ten years ago I knew him in Cincinnati as a baker, and a first-rate one too; and while Gesenius issued books and got fame, Eitlegeorge issued bread and got money. At length he disappeared from the city. Travelling from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, a year or two since, I came upon a farm of such fine land that it attracted my attention, and induced me to ask for the owner. It belonged to our friend of the oven! There was a whole township belonging to him, and a good use he appeared to make of it. Courage then, ye bakers! In a short time you may raise wheat instead of molding dough.
A Hole in the Pocket.—If it were not for these holes in the pocket, we should all be rich. A pocket is like a cistern, a small leak at the bottom is worse than a large pump at the top. God sends rain enough every year, but it is not every man that will take pains to catch it; and it is not every man that catches it who knows how to keep it.