"O, ho! So you've got that notion in your head, have you? Well, let me tell you that if there is another living creature more forlorn, buncoed, and bedevilled than the retired farmer it is the city or town man who tries farming as a peaceful and easy way to spend his declining years. Talk about miscalculating! He is the one that has it down to a fine thing. The city man thinks that if he has a farm clear of debt, good stock, and up-to-date implements he'll not only be able to sit under his own vine and fig tree, but to make money. It's a pretty dream: but it's seldom true. What the city man leaves out of the calculation is work—the hard, back-breaking, never-ending work it takes to run a farm. And when it comes to doing things he usually has about as much sense as a disappointed Brahma hen that sets on a crockery door-knob and tries to hatch out reversible egg-cups. He thinks all he has to do is to plant and let nature do the rest. Well, nature does it. Nature puts ten times as much steam in weeds as she does in turnips, and it looks as if she'd rather see her potato bugs plump and thrifty than anything else on the farm. After a man has tried farming for a few years he finds that nature is less his friend than his enemy. The number of blights, bugs, worms, and caterpillars she has depending on her bounty is out of all reason. Nature, my son, needs more petting and coaxing than a woman to make her treat you half-decent, and it's ten to one she'll jilt you in the end. No, my son, the farm is no place for a man who isn't ready to get up at four o'clock in the morning and crow with the roosters, and then plug away all day and be thankful if he gets through with his chores by nine o'clock at night.
"Yes, I know, my middle name is Jeremiah, but if you don't believe me just have a look at some of these city farmers next market day. You'll know them by their untidy clothes. The first thing a city man thinks when he moves to the country is that he doesn't need to care how he dresses, and he doesn't. A respectable scarecrow wouldn't be seen with some of them. And they're just about as careless about everything else, though it is taking care of everything that makes it possible for a man to get along on a farm at all. But what's the use of my talking? If you've made up your mind to have a try at farming nothing I can say will stop you; but don't forget that I told you."
From which it appears that in the never-ending debate regarding "Country Life versus City Life" much may be said on both sides—all of it bad. Even when eminent authorities are quoted the situation is not improved. Tolstoi assures us that "cities are places where humanity has commenced to rot," and Hawthorne put himself on record as believing that "the more a man turns over the clods the more like a clod his brain becomes." Thoreau considered country life ideal, because a man could provide for necessities with so little effort and have so much time for mental and spiritual growth, and Horace Greeley thought it admirable "if a man could only afford it." At the present time when so many teachers are shouting "Back to the soil" the merits of country life are more than ever in need of being investigated.
[MAY]
May 3.—After all the talking we have been doing it is just possible that there is nothing the matter with Ontario. Ontario may just be passing through a crisis. It is a rich province and is steadily growing richer. Now, in the richest counties, such as Middlesex, a change has commenced that may indicate the future of the province. The hundred-acre superstition is breaking down. Time was when a man who had less than a hundred acres, even though he had it clear of debt, was considered poor—a man who was trying to farm in cramped conditions. As soon as he could he would sell it, often at a sacrifice, and buy a hundred-acre farm with a nice, hand-welted mortgage on it. Then he could hold up his head in the community. In those brave days, before the passage of the McKinley bill, land in lots smaller than a hundred acres sold at a disadvantage. Now, however, the smaller lots, when in decent condition, bring the best prices. There are townships like Caradoc, where twenty-five acre farms are in the majority, and the people are getting rich and richer. One man can just about work twenty-five acres properly. In some cases they specialise on fruits or gardening, but in most cases they go in for mixed farming, and do it with a profit. They work their land well, manure it well, and get crops that would stagger the statisticians of the junior provinces. Ontario land is not the kind that a man can sow with the wind and reap with a whirlwind, and then go to the mushroom-growth capital and talk about having eighteen bushels to the acre. Ontario land is the kind that should be cultivated with a garden rake; and then it will yield forty or more bushels to the acre.
It is true that here and there one strikes a little land baron who owns three or four hundred, or even a thousand acres, but that sort of thing is passing. If he has a family the land must be divided up among the children, either before or after the death of the owner, and if he has no family the land will eventually be sold in farm lots. Large holdings of land will not pay in Ontario unless they can be worked, and tenants are practically unknown. I do not know of a single tenant farmer in this district. With the breaking up of the land into small holdings Ontario will gradually become what nature intended it to be, a garden province raising fruits, vegetables, and other luxuries for the big, hurrying provinces that are making so much haste to get rich. The small-farm idea has a firm foothold in the Niagara Peninsula, and it is spreading. There is hardly an acre anywhere in the province that is not fitted for gardening or intensive farming, and in time the small farms will prevail everywhere. Then, instead of asking, "What's the matter with Ontario?" people will be saying, "Just look at Ontario!"
With the advent of the small farm the "good roads" problem is being solved. Where you find a group of twenty-five acre holdings you will find a stretch of good road. Improvements are not so burdensome where most of the farms have a frontage of only thirty rods. Even the roadwork or statute labour has more effect and comes nearer to giving good roads than in the large-farm districts. This is especially true where the use of the split-log drag is understood. There is no getting around the fact that perfected stone roads are expensive, and until a scheme has been hit on that will make them less burdensome it would be a good idea to expatiate on the merits of the split-log drag. It makes even earth roads passable for most of the year, but its use requires a certain amount of public spirit, and a public-spirited citizen is a man whose motives are suspected. Moreover, he is a very rare creature. It may be accepted as a truism that every stretch of good road in the country leads to the home of a public-spirited citizen, but the stretches are few. When you find one it is usually worth while to find out the story of how it came to be built so as to get a light on human nature. You will usually find that some energetic man, like the celebrated monk of Siberia, of mud became weary and wearier, until at last he began to stir up his neighbours and the township council in the matter. In collecting money from his neighbours, besides those who were willing to help, he struck two classes of those who lack public spirit. First, and these are plentiful, he struck the men who do not want to contribute for fear some one else, even a passing stranger, may get some benefit from their contributions without paying for it. Then there is the totally yellow type of man who is glad to know that the work is going on, but refuses to contribute a cent because he knows that his neighbours are going to put it through anyway, and he will get the benefit of it without helping. This type of man usually has a perverted sense of humour, and whenever the matter is referred to laughs loudly at the way he got the start of his neighbours. When the truly public-spirited man gets the necessary money collected, and gets the council to contribute its share, he usually has to keep an eye on the work until it is completed, and altogether contributes in time and money three or four times as much as any one else. But if he gets a good road built he is fully repaid for his efforts. He finds in the end that the work paid, even if done from selfish motives. But his good neighbours will not let matters rest there. They see back of his public-spirited efforts some design for getting himself elected councillor or something of that sort. For a man to do a thing wholly for the good of the community is too incredible. Where the small farms prevail public-spirited citizens are naturally more plentiful, as the population is greater, and the good-roads movement is thereby the gainer.