The Fat of the Land Part 16

Between March 1 and May 10 were born 25 calves, which were all sold before July 1. The population of our factory farm was increasing so rapidly that it became necessary to have more help. We already had eight men and three women, besides the help in the big house. One would think that eight men could do the work on a farm of 320 acres, and so they can, most of the time; but in seed-time and harvest they are not sufficient at Four Oaks. We could not work the teams.

Up to March, 1897, Sam had full charge of the chickens, and also looked after the hogs, with the help of Anderson. Judson and French had their hands full in the cow stables, and Lars was more than busy with the carriage horses and the driving. Thompson was working foreman, and his son Zeb and Johnson looked after the farm horses during the winter and did the general work. From that time on Sam gave his entire time to the chickens, Anderson his entire time to the hogs, and Johnson began gardening in real earnest. This left only Thompson and Zeb for general farm work.

Again I advertised for two farm hands. I selected two of the most promising applicants and brought them out to the farm. Thompson discharged one of them at the end of the first day for persistently jerking his team, and the other discharged himself at the week's end, to continue his tramp. Once more I resorted to the city papers. This time I was more fortunate, for I found a young Swede, square-built and blond-headed, who said he had worked on his father's farm in the old country, and had left it because it was too small for the five boys.

Otto was slow of speech and of motion, but he said he could work, and I hired him. The other man whom I sent to the farm at the same time proved of no use whatever. He stayed four days, and was dismissed for innocuous desuetude. Still another man whom I tried did well for five weeks, and then broke out in a most profound spree, from which he could not be weaned. He ended up by an a.s.sault on Otto in the stable yard. The Swede was taken by surprise, and was handsomely bowled over by the first onslaught of his half-drunk, half-crazed antagonist. As soon, however, as his slow mind took in the fact that he was being pounded, he gathered his forces, and, with a grunt for a war-cry, rolled his enemy under him, sat upon his stomach, and, flat-handed, slapped his face until he shouted for aid. The man left the farm at once, and I commended the Swede for having used the flat of his hand.

In spite of bad luck with the new men we were able to plough and seed 144 acres by May 10. Lots Nos. 8, 12, 13, and 14 were planted to corn, and No. 15 sowed to oats, and the 10 acres on the home lot were divided between sweet fodder corn, potatoes, and cabbage. The abundant water in the soil gave the crops a fair start, and June proved an excellent growing month, a rainfall of nearly four inches putting them beyond danger from the short water supply of July and August. Indeed, had it not been for the generosity of June we should have been in a bad way, for the next three months gave a scant four inches of rain.

The oats made a good growth, though the straw was rather short, and the corn did very well indeed,--due largely to thorough cultivation. Twelve acres of oats were cut for forage, and the rest yielded 33 bushels to the acre,--a little over 1300 bushels.

The alfalfa and timothy made a good start. From the former we cut, late in June, 2 tons to the acre, and from the timothy, in July, 2 tons,--50 tons of timothy and 45 of alfalfa. Each of these fields received the usual top-dressing after the crop was cut; but the timothy did not respond,--the late season was too dry. We cut two more crops from the alfalfa field, which together made a yield of a little more than 2 tons. The alfalfa in that dry summer gave me 95 tons of good hay, proving its superiority as a dry-weather crop.

Johnson started the one-and-one-half-acre vegetable and fruit garden in April, and devoted much of his time to it. His primitive hotbeds gradually emptied themselves into the garden, and we now began to taste the fruit of our own soil, much to the pleasure of the whole colony. It is surprising what a real gardener can do with a garden of this size. By feeding soil and plants liberally, he is able to keep the ground producing successive crops of vegetables, from the day the frost leaves it in the spring until it again takes possession in the fall, without doing any wrong to the land. Indeed, our garden grows better and more prolific each year in spite of the immense crops that are taken from it. This can be done only by a person who knows his business, and Johnson is such a person. He gave much of his time to this practical patch, but he also worked with Polly among the shrubs on the lawn, and in her sunken flower garden, which is the pride of her life. We shall hear more about this flower garden later on.

The accounts for the second quarter of the year show these items on the income side:--

b.u.t.ter $1052.00 Eggs 379.00 Twenty-five calves 275.00 -------- Total $1706.00

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

THE YOUNG ORCHARD

One of the most enjoyable occupations of a farmer's life is the care of young trees. Until your experience in this work is of a personal and proprietary nature, you will not realize the pleasure it can afford. The intimate study of plant life, especially if that plant life is yours, is a never failing source of pleasurable speculation, and a thing upon which to hang dreams. You grow to know each tree, not only by its shape and its habit of growth, but also by peculiarities that belong to it as an individual. The erect, st.u.r.dy bearing of one bespeaks a frank, bold nature, which makes it willing to accept its surroundings and make the most of them; while the crooked, dwarfish nature of another requires the utmost care of the husbandman to keep it within the bounds of good behavior. And yet we often find that the slow-growing, ill-conditioned young tree, if properly cared for, will bring forth the finest fruit at maturity.

To study the character and to watch the development of young trees is a pleasing and useful occupation for the man who thinks of them as living things with an inheritance that cannot be ignored. That seeds in all appearance exactly alike should send forth shoots so unlike, is a wonder of Nature; and that young shoots in the same soil and with the same care should show such dissimilarity in development, is a riddle whose answer is to be found only in the binding laws of heredity. That a tiny bud inserted under the bark of a well-grown tree can change a sour root to a sweet bough, ought to make one careful of the buds which one grafts on the living trunk of one's tree of life. The young orchard can teach many lessons to him who is willing to be taught; in the hands of him who is not, the schoolmaster has a very sorry time of it, no matter how he sets his lessons.

The side pockets of my jacket are usually weighted down with pruning-shears, a sharp knife, and a handled copper wire,--always, indeed, in June, when I walk in my orchard. June is the month of all months for the prudent orchardist to go thus armed, for the apple-tree borer is abroad in the land. When the quick eye of the master sees a little pile of sawdust at the base of a tree, he knows that it is time for him to sit right down by that tree and kill its enemy. The sharp knife enlarges the hole, which is the trail of the serpent, and the sharp-pointed, flexible wire follows the route until it has reached and transfixed the borer.

This is the only way. It is the nature of the borer to maim or kill the tree; it is for the interest of the owner that the tree should live. The conflict is irrepressible, and the weakest must go to the wall. The borer evil can be reduced to a minimum by keeping the young trees banked three or four inches high with firm dirt or ashes; but borers must be followed with the wire, once they enter the bark.

The sharp knife and the pruning-shears have other uses in the June orchard. Limbs and sprouts will come in irregular and improper places, and they should be nipped out early and thus save labor and mutilation later on. Sprouts that start from the eyes on the trunk can be removed by a downward stroke of the gloved hand. All intersecting or crossing boughs are removed by knife or scissors, and branches which are too luxuriant in growth are cut or pinched back. Careful guidance of the tree in June will avoid the necessity of severe correction later on.

A man ought to plant an orchard, if for no other reason, that he may have the pleasure of caring for it, and for the companionship of the trees. This was the second year of growth for my orchard, and I was gratified by the evidences of thrift and vigor. Fine, spreading heads adorned the tops of the stubs of trees that had received such (apparently) cruel treatment eighteen months before. The growth of these two seasons convinced me that the four-year-old root and the three-year-old stem, if properly managed, have greater possibilities of rapid development than roots or stems of more tender age. I think I made no mistake in planting three-year-old trees.

As I worked in my orchard I could not help looking forward to the time when the trees would return a hundred-fold for the care bestowed upon them. They would begin to bring returns, in a small way, from the fourth year, and after that the returns would increase rapidly. It is safe to predict that from the tenth to the fortieth year a well-managed orchard will give an average yearly income of $100 an acre above all expenses, including interest on the original cost. A fifty-acre orchard of well-selected apple trees, near a first-cla.s.s market and in intelligent hands, means a net income of $5000, taking one year with another, for thirty or forty years. What kind of investment will pay better? What sort of business will give larger returns in health and pleasure?

I do not mean to convey the idea that forty years is the life of an orchard; hundreds of years would be more correct. As trees die from accident or decrepitude, others should take their places. Thus the lease of life becomes perpetual in hands that are willing to keep adding to the soil more than the trees and the fruit take from it. Comparatively few owners of orchards do this, and those who belong to the majority will find fault with my figures; but the thinking few, who do not expect to enjoy the fat of the land without making a reasonable return, will say that I am too conservative,--that a well-placed, well-cared-for, well-selected, and well-marketed orchard will do much better than my prophecy. Nature is a good husbandman so far as she goes, but her scheme contemplates only the perpetuation of the tree, by seeds or by other means. Nature's plan is to give to each specimen a nutritive ration.

Anything beyond this is thrown away on the individual, and had better be used for the multiplying of specimens. When man comes to ask something more than germinating seeds from a plant, he must remove it from the crowded clump, give it more light and air, _and feed it for product_. In other words, he must give it more nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash than it can use for simple growth and maintenance, and thus make it burst forth into flower-or fruit-product. Nature produces the apple tree, but man must cultivate it and feed it if he would be fed and comforted by it. People who neglect their orchards can get neither pleasure nor profit from them, and such persons are not competent to sit in judgment upon the value of an apple tree. Only those who love, nourish, and profit by their orchards may come into the apple court and speak with authority.

CHAPTER XL

THE TIMOTHY HARVEST

On Friday, the 25th, the children came home from their schools, and with them came Jim Jarvis to spend the summer holidays. Our invitation to Jarvis had been unanimous when he bade us good-by in the winter. Jack was his chum, Polly had adopted him, I took to him from the first, and Jane, in her shy way, admired him greatly. The boys took to farm life like ducks to water. They were hot for any kind of work, and hot, too, from all kinds. I could not offer anything congenial until the timothy harvest in July. When this was on, they were happy and useful at the same time,--a rare combination for boys.

The timothy harvest is attractive to all, and it would be hard to find a form of labor which contributes more to the aesthetic sense than does the gathering of this fragrant gra.s.s. At four o'clock on a fine morning, with the barometer "set fair," Thompson started the mower, and kept it humming until 6.30, when Zeb, with a fresh team, relieved him. Zeb tried to cut a little faster than his father, but he was allowed no more time. Promptly at nine he was called in, and there was to be no more cutting that day. At eleven o'clock the tedder was started, and in two hours the cut gra.s.s had been turned. At three o'clock the rake gathered it into windrows, from which it was rolled and piled into heaps, or c.o.c.ks, of six hundred or eight hundred pounds each. The cutting of the morning was in safe bunches before the dew fell, there to go through the process of sweating until ten o'clock the next day. It was then opened and fluffed out for four hours, after which all hands and all teams turned to and hauled it into the forage barn.

The gra.s.s that was cut one morning was safely housed as hay by the second night, if the weather was favorable; if not, it took little harm in the hayc.o.c.ks, even from foul weather. It is the sun-bleach that takes the life out of hay.

This year we had no trouble in getting fifty tons of as fine timothy hay as horses could wish to eat or man could wish to see. We began to cut on Tuesday, the 6th of July, and by Sat.u.r.day evening the twenty-acre crop was under cover. The boys blistered their hands with the fork handles, and their faces, necks, and arms with the sun's rays, and claimed to like the work and the blisters. Indeed, tossing clean, fragrant hay is work fit for a prince; and a man never looks to better advantage or more picturesque than when, redolent with its perfume, he slings a jug over the crook in his elbow and listens to the gurgle of the home-made ginger ale as it changes from jug to throat. There may be joys in other drinks, but for solid comfort and refreshment give me a July hay-field at 3 P.M., a jug of water at forty-eight degrees, with just the amount of mola.s.ses, vinegar, and ginger that is Polly's secret, and I will give cards and spades to the broadest goblet of bubbles that was ever poured, and beat it to a standstill. Add to this a blond head under a broad hat, a thin white gown, such as gra.s.shoppers love, and you can see why the emptying of the jug was a satisfying function in our field; for Jane was the one who presided at these afternoon teas. Often Jane was not alone; Florence or Jessie, or both, or others, made hay while the sun shone in those July days, and many a load went to the barn capped with white and laughter. The young people decided that a hay farm would be ideal--no end better than a factory farm--and advised me to put all the land into timothy and clover. I was not too old to see the beauties of haying-time, with such voluntary labor; but I was too old and too much interested with my experiment to be cajoled by a lot of youngsters. I promised them a week of haying in each fifty-two, but that was all the concession I would make. Laura said:--

"We are commanded to make hay while the sun shines; and the sun always shines at Four Oaks, for me."

It was pretty of her to say that; but what else would one expect from Laura?

The twelve acres from which the fodder oats had been cut were ploughed and fitted for sugar beets and turnips. I was not at all certain that the beets would do anything if sown so late, but I was going to try. Of the turnips I could feel more certain, for doth not the poet say:--

"The 25th day of July, Sow your turnips, wet or dry"?

As the 25th fell on Sunday, I tried to placate the agricultural poet by sowing half on the 24th and the other half on the 26th, but it was no use. Whether the turnip G.o.d was offended by the fractured rule and refused his blessing, or whether the dry August and September prevented full returns, is more than I can say. Certain it is that I had but a half crop of turnips and a beggarly batch of beets to comfort me and the hogs.

Some little consolation, however, was found in Polly's joy over a small crop of currants which her yearling bushes produced. I also heard rumors of a few cherries which turned their red cheeks to the sun for one happy day, and then disappeared. c.o.c.k Robin's breast was red the next morning, and on this circ.u.mstantial evidence Polly accused him. He pleaded "not guilty," and strutted on the lawn with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and his suspected breast as much in evidence as a pouter pigeon's. A jury, mostly of blackbirds, found the charge "not proven,"

and the case was dismissed. I was convinced by the result of this trial that the only safe way would be to provide enough cherries for the birds and for the people too, and ordered fifty more trees for fall planting.

I found by experience, that if one would have bird neighbors (and who would not?), he must provide liberally for their wants and also for their luxuries. I have stolen a march as to the cherries by planting scores of mulberry trees, both native and Russian. Birds love mulberries even better than they do cherries, and we now eat our pies in peace. To make amends for this ruse, I have established a number of drinking fountains and free baths; all of which have helped to make us friends.

In August I sold, near the top of a low market, 156 young hogs. At $4.50 per hundred, the bunch netted me $1807. They did not weigh quite as much as those sold the previous autumn, and I found two ways of accounting for this. The first and most probable was that fall pigs do not grow so fast as those farrowed in the spring. This is sufficient to account for the fact that the herd average was twenty pounds lighter than that of its predecessor. I could not, however, get over the notion that Anderson's nervousness had in some way taken possession of the swine (we have Holy Writ for a similar case), and that they were wasted in growth by his spirit of unrest. He was uniformly kind to them and faithful with their food, but there was lacking that sense of cordial sympathy which should exist between hog and man if both would appear at their best. Even when Anderson came to their pens reeking with the rich savor of the food they loved, their ears would p.r.i.c.k up (as much as a Chester White's ears can), and with a "woof!" they would shoot out the door, only to return in a moment with the greatest confidence. I never heard that "woof" and saw the stampede without looking around for the "steep place" and the "sea," feeling sure that the incident lacked only these accessories to make it a catastrophe.

Anderson was good and faithful, and he would work his arms and legs off for the pigs; but the spirit of unrest entered every herd which he kept, though neither he nor I saw it clearly enough to go and "tell it in the city." With other swineherds my hogs averaged from fifteen to eighteen pounds better than with faithful Anderson, and I am, therefore, competent to speak of the gross weight of the spirit of contentment.

CHAPTER XLI

STRIKE AT GORDON'S MINE

Frank Gordon owned a coal mine about six miles west of the village of Exeter, and four miles from Four Oaks. A village called Gordonville had sprung up at the mouth of the mine. It was the home of the three hundred miners and their families,--mostly Huns, but with a sprinkling of Cornishmen.

The houses were built by the owner of the mine, and were leased to the miners at a small yearly rental. They were modest in structure, but they could be made inviting and neat if the occupants were thrifty. No one was allowed to sell liquor on the property owned by the Gordons, but outside of this limit was a fringe of low saloons which did a thriving business off the improvident miners.

There had never been a strike at Gordonville, and such a thing seemed improbable, for Gordon was a kind master, who paid his men promptly and looked after their interests more than is usual for a capitalist.

It was, therefore, a distinct surprise when the foreman of the mine telephoned to Gordon one July morning that the men had struck work.

Gordon did not understand the reason of it, but he expressed himself as being heartily glad, for financial reasons, that the men had gone out.

He had more than enough coal on the surface and in cars to supply the demand for the next three months, and it would be money in his pocket to dispose of his coal without having to pay for the labor of replacing it.

During the day the reason for the strike was announced. From the establishment of the mine it had been the custom for the miners to have their tools sharpened at a shop built and run by the property. This was done for the accommodation of the men, and the charge for keeping the tools sharp was ten cents a week for each man, or $5 a year. For twenty years no fault had been found with the arrangement; it had been looked upon as satisfactory, especially by the men. A walking delegate, mousing around the mine, and finding no other cause for complaint, had lighted upon this practice, and he told the men it was a shame that they should have to pay ten cents a week out of their hard-earned wages for keeping their tools sharp. He said that it was the business of the property to keep the tools sharp, and that the men should not be called upon to pay for that service; that they ought, in justice to themselves and for the dignity of a.s.sociated labor, to demand that this onerous tax be removed; and, to insure its removal, he declared a strike on. This was the reason, and the only reason, for the strike at Gordon's mine. Three hundred men quit work, and three hundred families suffered, many of them for the necessities of life, simply because a loud-mouthed delegate a.s.sured them that they were being imposed upon.

Things went on quietly at the mine. There was no riot, no disturbance.