Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

by Henry Ward Beecher

IV.

A LETTER FROM THE FARM.

Peekskill, May 28th, 1868.

My dear Mr. Bonner: You must expect no article from me this week. I am engaged. I was never more busy in my life. Let me relate my occupations. At about half past three in the morning, I wake. The light is just coming. I do not care for that, as I do not propose to get up at such an hour. But the birds do care. They evidently wind up their singing apparatus over night. For, when the first bird breaks the silence, in an instant the rest go off, as if a spring had been touched which moved them all. Was ever such noise! There are robins without count, wood-thrushes, orioles, sparrows, bobolinks, meadow-larks, bluebirds, yellow-birds, wrens, warblers, catbirds (as the Northern mocking-bird is called), martins, twittering swallows. Think of the noise made by mixing all these bird-notes together! Add a rooster, and a solemn old crow to carry the bass. Then consider that of each kind there are scores, and of some kinds hundreds, within ear reach, and you will have some faint conception of the opening chant of the day.

You may not believe that I wake so early. But I do. You may be still less inclined to believe that, after listening for ten minutes to this mixture, I again go to sleep. But I solemnly do. Nor do I think of getting up before six o’clock. Whether I should emerge even then, if it were not for the savory odor that begins to steal through my cottage, I cannot tell. After breakfast, there are so many things to be done first that I neglect them all. The morning is so fine, the young leaves are so beautiful, the bloom on the orchards is so gorgeous, the sounds and sights are so many and so winning, that I am apt to sit down on the

veranda, for just a moment, and for just another, and for a series of them, until an hour goes by. Do not blame me! Do not laugh at such farming and such a farmer. The soil overhead bears larger and better crops, for a sensible man, than does the soil under feet. There are blossoms in the clouds. There is fruit upon invisible trees, to those who know how to pluck it.

But then sky-gazing and this dallying with the landscape will not do. What crowds of things require the eye and hand! Flowers must be transplanted. Flower-seeds must be sown; shrubs and trees pruned; vines looked after; a walk taken over the hill to see after some evergreens, with many pauses to gaze upon the landscape, and many birds watched as they are confidentially exhibiting their domestic traits before you. The kittens, too, at the barn, must be visited, the calf, the new cow. Then every gardener knows how much time is consumed in noticing the new plants; for instance, I have some eight new strawberries that need watching, each one purporting to be a world’s wonder. I am quite anxious about eight or ten new kinds of clematis; two new species of honeysuckle; eight or ten new and rare evergreens; and ever so many other things,—shrubs and flowers. What shall I say of the new peas, new beans, rare cucumbers, early melons, extraordinary potatoes?

Speaking of potatoes, do you know anything of the Early Rose? Let me tell you. One hundred bushels were sold this spring, to one man, for eighty dollars a bushel! Since then, they have been selling by the pound, at the increasing prices of one, two, and three dollars a pound. It takes about three potatoes to make a pound.

Now for a story—true, for I had it from Timothy Titcomb’s lips. A friend sent him this potato, with injunctions to give it the utmost care. He planted it in his garden, and when it ripened, last summer, not informed of its exceeding preciousness, he proceeded to eat. In a reasonable time he

consumed three barrels, which at the lowest price were worth about seven hundred dollars!