People And Patriot

SPECIALTIES IN FARMING.
I have often thought that there is no class of farmers in the world so given to mounting hobbies and pet theories and riding them at a wild, reckless speed, as are those born and bred upon the wide acres of the United States. From childhood we are subjected to influences which render us ambitious to succeed, eager to acquire wealth, and dissatisfied with our own lot when we see somebody whom we imagine is doing a little better. It may be that the independence of our American farmers, the full ownership of the land they till, may be the stepping stone to the constantly shifting systems of farming which we see all about us. We are free and unfretted from landlords' restrictions, and do as we will, and it is possible that farmers of other nations might, in time, become as unsteady as we are, were it possible.
There is nothing that throws the common farmer so badly "off his base" as to read of or witness the result of the labors of some specialist in farming. It seems to matter little whether the reports are reasonable or exaggerated. There are people enough who are ready to be misled by them, and afterward forced to swallow the bitter pill of disappointment. The seed has already been sown broadcast that is to bring to many farmers long faces and blasted hopes at the close of the season.
Many farmers without experience in the business have been reading the market quotations of onions, have searched some work on market gardening, and read that an average crop is about 150 barrels, and almost got wild over visions of $600 per acre yield in the place of the old $25 to be realized from corn or wheat. They fail to learn that these immense yields are from muck lands, fitted by nature for the growth of onions, or else upon grounds prepared by applying 75 tons of rich stable manure to the acre, and tilled with a thoroughness that they know nothing about. Instead of 150 barrels per acre, to be sold at $4, the first year's labor of many who are jumping into the business will be likely to be rewarded with 100 bushels, which may sell at from 35 to 50 cents per bushel, or—as sometimes happens—not sell at any price.
Nor is the onion business the only field that is now blooming with hope for eager fortune-seekers. In a late number of a popular farm paper appears a statement to the effect that the average yield of strawberries is about 320 bushels to the acre, and that they can be raised at an expense of about $12 per acre. Did anybody ever see, think or dream of such a broad, level and all-of-the-way-down-hill road to fortune as we have here pointed out? More than 10,000 quarts to the acre at almost a free gift, which, at 10 cents, would make the income a little more than $1000 net from each acre of land. If very much of this story is true, how strange it is that long ere this every hillside and valley in America has not lain thick and red with strawberries, and the armies of foreign pauper children imported to gather them! But that little word "if" is the great stumbling block in our way. It is not true that the fruit named yields 320 bushels per acre; neither is it true that berries of any sort can be cultivated at a cost of $12 per acre. It may be true that some fruit grower, in some years when all the circumstances were the most favorable in every particular, gathered even more than the amount stated, but it is far above the average, and the writer of the essay knows that such a statement will mislead scores and hundreds of his readers—provided he knows anything about the business.
It is true that some years farmers who raise onions make good profits from their land, while during other seasons they make nothing. The same is true of other vegetables, as well as in producing small fruits. Whether it is true that these producers of special crops make more during a period of ten years than the raiser of grain, stock and vegetables combined, I am not able to say; but I do know that the farmer who jumps into onions or berries, and hopes to gather a fortune from the business in a year or two, will be very likely to meet with disappointment. The raising of small fruits or cabbages or onions is a good business when properly conducted and "well stuck to," provided the location, &c., are favorable—[Cor. Country Gentleman.