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.