Large And Small Farms

There is fascination for most minds in naked magnitude. The young

colonel, who can hardly handle a brigade effectively in battle, would

like of all things to command a great army; and the tiller of fifty

rugged acres has his ravishing dreams of the delights inherent in a

great Western farm, with its square miles of corn-fields, and its

thousands of cattle. Each of them is partly right and partly wrong.



Th re are generals capable of commanding 100,000 men, Napoleon says

there were two such in his day--himself and another: and these generally

find the work they are fit for, without special effort or aspiration. So

there are men, each of whom can really farm a township, not merely let a

herd of cattle roam over it unfed and unsheltered, living and dying as

may chance: the owners expecting to grow rich by their natural increase.

This ranching is not properly farming at all, but a very different and

far ruder art. I judge that the farmers who can really till--or even

graze--several thousand acres of land, so as to realize a fair interest

on its value, are even scarcer than the farms so capacious.



But there is such a thing as farming on a large scale; and it is a good

business for those who understand it, and have all the means it

requires. The farmer who annually grows a thousand acres of good Grain,

and takes reasonable care of a thousand head of Cattle, is to be held in

all honor. He will usually grow both his Grain and his Beef cheaper than

a small farmer could do it, and will generally find a good balance on

the right side when he makes up and squares his accounts of a year's

operations. I could recommend no man to run into debt for a great farm,

expecting that farm to work him out of it but he who inherited or has

acquired a large farm, well stocked, and knows how to make it pay, may

well cling to it, and count himself fortunate in its possession. But the

great farmer is already regarded with sufficient envy. Most boys would

gladly be such as he is; the difficulty in the case is that they lack

the energy, persistency, resolution, and self-denial, requisite for its

achievement.



We will leave large farms and farming to recommend themselves, while we

consider more directly the opportunities and reasonable expectations of

the small farmer.



The impression widely current that money cannot be made on a small

farm--that, in farming, the great fish eat up the little ones--is

deduced from very imperfect data. I have admitted that Grain and Beef

can usually be produced at less cost on great than on small farms,

though the rule is not without exceptions. I only insist that there are

room and hope for the small farmer also, and that large farming can

never absorb nor enable us to dispense with small farms.



I. And first with regard to Fruit. Some Tree-Fruits, as well as Grapes,

are grown on a large scale in California--it is said, with profit. But

nearly all our Pears, Apples, Cherries, Plums, etc., are grown by small

farmers or gardeners, and are not likely to be grown otherwise. All of

them need at particular seasons a personal attention and a vigilance

which can seldom or never be accorded by the owners or renters of large

farms. Should small farms be generally absorbed into larger, our

Fruit-culture would thenceforth steadily decline.



II. The same is even more true of the production of Eggs and the rearing

of Fowls. I have had knowledge of several attempts at producing Eggs and

Fowls on a large scale in this country, but I have no trustworthy

account of a single decided success in such an enterprise. On the

contrary, many attempts to multiply Fowls by thousands have broken down,

just when their success seemed secure. Some contagious disease, some

unforeseen disaster, blasted the sanguine expectations of the

experimenter, and transmuted his gold into dross.



Yet, I judge that there is no industry more capable of indefinite

extension, with fair returns, than Fowl-breeding on a moderate scale.

Eggs and Chickens are in universal demand. They are luxuries appreciated

alike by rich and poor; and they might be doubled in quantity without

materially depressing, the market. Our thronged and fashionable

watering-places are never adequately supplied with them; our cities

habitually take all they can get and look around for more. I believe

that twice the largest number of Chickens ever yet produced in one year

might be reared in 1871, with profit to the breeders. Even if others

should fail, the home market found in each family would prove signally

elastic.



This industry should especially commend itself to poor widows,

struggling to retain and rear their children in frugal independence. A

widow who, in the neighborhood of a city or of a manufacturing village,

can rent a cottage with half an acre of southward-sloping, sunny land,

which she may fence so tightly as to confine her Hens therein, whenever

their roaming abroad would injure or annoy her neighbors, and who can

incur the expense of constructing thereon a warm, commodious Hen-house,

may almost certainly make the production of Eggs and Fowls a source of

continuous profit. If she can obtain cheaply the refuse of a

slaughter-house for feed, giving with it meal or grain in moderate

quantities, and according that constant, personal, intelligent

supervision, without which Fowl-breeding rarely prospers, she may

reasonably expect it to pay, while affording her an occupation not

subject to the caprices of an employer, and not requiring her to spend

her days away from home.



III. Though the ordinary Market Vegetables may be grown on large farms,

the fact that they seldom are is significant. Cabbages, Peas, Poled

Beans, Tomatoes, and even Potatoes, are mainly grown on small farms, as

they always have been. There are sections wherein no cash market for

Vegetables exists or can be relied on; and here they will continue to be

grown to the extent only of the growers' respective needs; but wherever

the prevalence of manufactures or the neighborhood of a great city gives

reasonable assurance of a market, they are grown at a profit per acre

which is rarely realized from a Grain-crop. No less than $100 per acre

is often, if not generally, achieved by the growers of Cabbage around

this city; and this not from rich, deep garden-mold, but from fair

farming land, underdrained, subsoiled, and liberally manured.



The careless, slipshod farmer may do better--that is, he will not fail

so signally--in Grain cultivation; but there are few more decided or

brilliant successes than have been achieved within the last few years

within sight of this City, and wholly in the tillage of small farms.



I trust I have here said enough to show that there is a legitimate and

promising field for agricultural enterprise and effort, other than that

which contemplates the acquisition and rule of a township, and that,

while farming on a large area is to many attractive and inspiring, there

are scope and incitement also for tillage on a humbler scale--for

tillage that permits no weed to ripen seed, and no nest of caterpillars

to flourish a month undisturbed--for tillage that achieves large crops

and profits from small areas, and rejoices in that neatness and

perfection of culture attainable only in the management of small farms.