In all parts it is the custom for the Negroes to save a little garden patch about the house, which, if properly tended, would supply the family with vegetables throughout the year. This is seldom the case. A recent Tuskegee catalog commenting on this says:
"If they have any garden at all, it is apt to be choked with weeds and other noxious growths. With every advantage of soil and climate, and with a steady market if they live near any city or large town, few of the colored farmers get any benefit from this, one of the most profitable of all industries."
As a matter of fact they care little for vegetables and seldom know how to prepare them for the table. The garden is regularly started in the Spring, but seldom amounts to much. I have ridden for a day with but a glimpse of a couple of attempts. As a result there will be a few collards, turnips, gourds, sweet potatoes and beans, but the mass of the people buy the little they need from the stores. A dealer in a little country store told me last summer that he would make about $75 an acre on three acres of watermelons, although almost every purchaser could raise them if he would. In many regions wild fruits are abundant, and blackberries during the season are quite a staple, but they are seldom canned. Some cattle are kept, but little butter is made, and milk is seldom on the bill of fare, the stock being sold when fat (?). Many families keep chickens, usually of the variety known as "dunghill fowls," which forage for themselves. But the market supplied with chickens by the small farmers, as it might easily be. Whenever opportunity offers, hunting and fishing become more than diversions, and the fondness for coon and 'possum is proverbial.
In a study of dietaries of Negroes made under Tuskegee Institute and reported in Bulletin No. 38, Office of Experimental Stations, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, it is stated:
"Comparing these negro dietaries with other dietaries and dietary standards, it will be seen that—
"(1) The quantities of protein are small. Roughly speaking, the food of these negroes furnished one-third to three-fourths as much protein as are called for in the current physiological standards and as are actually found in the dietaries of well fed whites in the United States and well fed people in Europe. They were, indeed, no larger than have been found in the dietaries of the very poor factory operatives and laborers in Germany and the laborers and beggars in Italy.
"(2) In fuel value the Negro dietaries compare quite favorably with those of well-to-do people of the laboring classes in Europe and the United States."
This indicates the ignorance of the Negro regarding the food he needs, so that in a region of plenty he is underfed as regards the muscle and bone forming elements and overfed so far as fuel value is concerned. One cannot help asking what effect a normal diet would have upon the sexual passions. It is worthy of notice that in the schools maintained by the whites there is relatively little trouble on this account. Possibly the changed life and food are in no small measure responsible for the difference.
Under diversified farming there would be steady employment most of the year, with a corresponding increase of production. As it is there are two busy seasons. In the Spring, planting and cultivating cotton, say from March to July, and in the Fall, cotton picking, September to December. The balance of the time the average farmer does little work. The present system entails a great loss of time.
The absence of good pastures and of meadows is noticeable. This is also too true of white farmers. Yet the grasses grow luxuriantly and nothing but custom or something else accounts for their absence; the something else is cotton. The adaptability of cotton to the Negro is almost providential. It has a long tap root and is able to stand neglect and yet produce a reasonable crop. The grains, corn and cane, with their surface roots, will not thrive under careless handling.