III.
WHERE TO FARM
When my father was over sixty years old, and had lived some twenty years in Erie County, Pennsylvania, he said to me: "I have several times removed, and always toward the West; I shall never remove again; but, were I to do so, it would be toward the East. Experience has taught me that the advantages of every section are counterbalanced by disadvantages, and that, where any crop is easily produced, there it sells low, and sometimes cannot be sold at all. I shall live and die right here; but, were I to remove again, it would not be toward the West."
This is but one side of a truth, and I give it for whatever it may be worth. Had my father plunged into the primitive forest in his twenty-fifth rather than his forty-fifth year, he would doubtless have become more reconciled to pioneer life than he ever did. I would advise no one over forty years of age to undertake, with scanty means, to dig a farm out of the dense forest, where great trees must be cut down and cut up, rolled into log-heaps, and hurried to ashes where they grew. Where half the timber can be sold for enough to pay the cost of cutting, the case is different; but I know right well that digging a farm out of the high woods is, to any but a man of wealth, a slow, hard task. Making one out of naked prairie, five to ten miles from timber, is less difficult, but not much. He who can locate where he has good timber on one side and rich prairie on the other is fortunate, and may hope, if his health be spared, to surround himself with every needed comfort within ten years. Still, the pioneer's life is a rugged one, especially for women and children; and I should advise any man who is worth $2,000 and has a family, to buy out an "improvement" (which, in most cases, badly needs improving) on the outskirt of civilization, rather than plunge into the pathless forest or push out upon the unbroken prairie. I rejoice that our Public Lands are free to actual settlers; I believe that many are thereby enabled to make for themselves homes who otherwise would have nothing to leave their children; yet I much prefer a home within the boundaries of civilization to one clearly beyond them. There is a class of drinking, hunting, frolicking, rarely working, frontiersmen, who seem to have been created on purpose to erect log cabins and break paths in advance of a different class of settlers, who regularly come in to buy them out and start them along after a few years. I should here prefer to follow rather than lead. If Co-operation shall ever be successfully applied to the improvement of wild lands, I trust it may be otherwise.
He who has a farm already, and is content with it, has no reason to ask, "Whither shall I go?" and he may rest assured that thoroughly good farming will pay as well in New England as in Kansas or in Minnesota. I advise no man who has a good farm anywhere, and is able to keep it, to sell and migrate. I know men who make money by growing food within twenty miles of this city quite as fast as they could in the West. If you have money to buy and work it, and know how to make the most of it, I believe you may find land really as cheap, all things considered, in Vermont as in Wisconsin or Arkansas.
And yet I believe in migration – believe that there are thousands in the Eastern and the Middle States who would improve their circumstances and prospects by migrating to the cheaper lands and broader opportunities of the West and South. For, in the first place, most men are by migration rendered more energetic and aspiring; thrown among strangers, they feel the necessity of exertion as they never felt it before. Needing almost everything, and obliged to rely wholly on themselves, they work in their new homes as they never did in their old; and the consequences are soon visible all around them.
"A stern chase is a long chase," say the sailors; and he who buys a farm mainly on credit, intending to pay for it out of its proceeds, finds interest, taxes, sickness, bad seasons, hail, frost, drouth, tornadoes, floods, &c., &c., deranging his calculations and impeding his progress, until he is often impelled to give up in despair. There are men who can surmount every obstacle and defy discouragement – these need no advice; but there are thousands who, having little means and large families, can grow into a good farm more easily and far more surely than they can pay for it; and these may wisely seek homes where population is yet sparse and land is consequently cheap. Doubtless, some migrate who might better have forborne; yet the instinct which draws our race toward sunset is nevertheless a true one. The East will not be depopulated; but the West will grow more rapidly in the course of the next twenty years than ever in the past. The Railroads which have brought Kansas and Minnesota within three days, and California within a week of us, have rendered this inevitable.
But the South also invites immigration as she never did till now. Her lands are still very cheap; she is better timbered, in the average, than the West; her climate attracts; her unopened mines and unused water-power call loudly for enterprise, labor and skill. It is absurd to insist that her soil is exhausted when not one-third of it has ever yet been plowed. I do not advise solitary migration to the South, because she needs schools, mills, roads, bridges, churches, &c., &c., which the solitary immigrant can neither provide nor well do without: and I have no assurance that he, if obliged to work out for present bread, would find those ready to employ and willing to pay him; but let a hundred Northern farmers and mechanics worth $1,000 to $3,000 each combine to select (through chosen agents) and buy ten or twenty thousand acres in some Southern State, embracing hill and vale, timber and tillage, water-power and minerals, and divide it equitably among themselves, after laying it out with roads, a park, a village-plat, sites for churches, schools, &c., and I am confident that they can thus make pleasant homes more cheaply and speedily there than almost anywhere else.
Good farming land, improved or unimproved, is this day cheaper in the United States, all things considered, than in any other country – cheaper than it can long remain. So many are intent on short cuts to riches that the soil is generally neglected, and may be bought amazingly cheap in parts of Connecticut as well as in Iowa or Nebraska. When I was last in Illinois, I rode for some hours beside a gray-coated farmer of some sixty years, who told me this: "I came here thirty years ago, and took up, at $1-1/4 per acre, a good tract of land, mainly in timber. I am now selling off the timber at $100 per acre, reserving the land." That seems to me a good operation – not so quick as a corner in the stock-market, but far safer. And, while I would advise no man to incur debt, I say most earnestly to all who have means, "Look out the place where you would prefer to live and die; take time to suit yourself thoroughly; choose it with reference to your means, your calling, your expectations, and, if you can pay for it, buy it. Do not imagine that land is cheap in the West or the South only; it is to be found cheap in every State by those who are able to own and who know how to use it."
I earnestly trust that the obvious advantages of settling in colonies are to be widely and rapidly improved by our people, nearly as follows: One thousand heads of families unite to form a colony, contribute $100 to $500 each to defray the cost of seeking out and securing a suitable location, and send out two or three of the most capable and trustworthy of their number to find and purchase it; and now let their lands be surveyed and divided into village or city lots at or near the center, larger allotments (for mechanics' and merchants' homes) surrounding that center, and far larger (for farms) outside of these; and let each member, on or soon after his arrival, select a village-lot, out-lot, farm, or one of each if he chooses and can pay for them. Let ample reservations of the best sites for churches, school-houses, a town hall, public park, etc., be made in laying out the village, and let each purchaser of a lot or farm be required to plant shade-trees along the highways which skirt or traverse it. If irrigation by common effort be deemed necessary, let provision be made for that. Run up a large, roomy structure for a family hotel or boarding-house; and now invite each stockholder to come on, select his land, pay for it, and get up some sort of a dwelling, leaving his family to follow when this shall have been rendered habitable; but, if they insist on coming on with him and taking their chances, so be it.
IV.
PREPARING TO FARM
I write mainly for beginners – for young persons, and some not so young, who are looking to farming as the vocation to which their future years are to be given, by which their living is to be gained. In this chapter, I would counsel young men, who, not having been reared in personal contact with the daily and yearly round of a farmer's cares and duties, purpose henceforth to live by farming.
To these I would earnestly say, "No haste!" Our boys are in too great a hurry to be men. They want to be bosses before they have qualified themselves to be efficient journeymen. I have personally known several instances of young men, fresh from school or from some city vocation, buying or hiring a farm and undertaking to work it; and I cannot now recall a single instance in which the attempt has succeeded; while speedy failure has been the usual result. The assumption that farming is a rude, simple matter, requiring little intellect and less experience, has buried many a well-meaning youth under debts which the best efforts of many subsequent years will barely enable him to pay off. In my opinion, half our farmers now living would say, if questioned, that they might better have waited longer before buying or hiring a farm.
When I was ten years old, my father took a job of clearing off the mainly fallen and partially rotten timber – largely White Pine and Black Ash – from fifty acres of level and then swampy land; and he and his two boys gave most of the two ensuing years (1821-2) to the rugged task. When it was finished, I – a boy of twelve years – could have taken just such a tract of half-burned primitive forest as that was when we took hold of it, and cleared it by an expenditure of seventy to eighty per cent. of the labor we actually bestowed upon that. I had learned, in clearing this, how to economize labor in any future undertaking of the kind; and so every one learns by experience who steadily observes and reflects. He must have been a very good farmer at the start, or a very poor one afterward, who cannot grow a thousand bushels of grain much cheaper at thirty years of age than he could at twenty.
To every young man who has had no farming experience, or very little, yet who means to make farming his vocation, I say, Hire out, for the coming year, to the very best farmer who will give you anything like the value of your labor. Buy a very few choice books, (if you have them not already,) which treat of Geology, Chemistry, Botany, and the application of their truths in Practical Agriculture; give to these the close and thoughtful attention of your few leisure hours; keep your eyes wide open, and set down in a note-book or pocket-diary each night a minute of whatever has been done on the farm that day, making a note of each storm, shower, frost, hail, etc., and also of the date at which each planted crop requires tillage or is ripe enough to harvest, and ascertaining, so far as possible, what each crop produced on the farm has cost, and which of them all are produced at a profit and which at a loss. At the year's end, hire again to the same or another good farmer and pursue the same course; and so do till you shall be twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, which is young enough to marry, and quite young enough to undertake the management of a farm. By this time, if you have carefully saved and wisely invested your earnings, you will have several hundred dollars; and, if you do not choose to migrate to some region where land is very cheap, you will have found some one willing to sell you a small farm on credit, taking a long mortgage as security. Your money – assuming that you have only what you will have earned – will all be wanted to fix up your building, buy a team and cow, with the few implements needed, and supply you with provisions till you can grow some. If you can start thus experienced and full-handed, you may, by diligence, combined with good fortune, begin to make payments on your mortgage at the close of your second year.
I hate debt as profoundly as any one can, but I do not consider this really running into debt. One has more land than he needs, and does not need his pay for it forthwith; another wants land, but lacks the means of present payment. They two enter into an agreement mutually advantageous, whereby the poorer has the present use and ultimate fee-simple of the farm in question, in consideration of the payment of certain sums as duly stipulated. Technically, the buyer becomes a debtor; practically, I do not regard him as such, until payments fall due which he is unable promptly to meet. Let him rigorously avoid all other debt, and he need not shrink from nor be ashamed of this.
I have a high regard for scientific attainments; I wish every young man were thoroughly instructed in the sciences which underlie the art of farming. But all the learning on earth, though it may powerfully help to make a good farmer, would not of itself make one. When a young man has learned all that seminaries and lectures, books and cabinets, can teach him, he still needs practice and experience to make him a good farmer.
– "But wouldn't you have a young man study in order that he may become a good farmer?"
– If he has money, Yes. I believe a youth worth four or five thousand dollars may wisely spend a tenth of his means in attending lectures, and even courses of study, at any good seminary where Natural Science is taught and applied to Agriculture. But life is short at best; and he who has no means, or very little, cannot really afford to attend even an Agricultural College. He can acquire so much of Science as is indispensable in the cheaper way I have indicated. He cannot wisely consent to spend the best years of his life in getting ready to live.
He who has already mastered the art of farming, and has adequate means, may of course buy a farm to-morrow, though he be barely or not quite of age. He has little to learn from me. Yet I think even such have often concluded, in after years, that they were too hasty in buying land – that they might profitably have waited, and deliberated, and garnered the treasures of experience, before they took the grave step of buying their future home; with regard to which I shall make some suggestions in my next chapter.
But I protest against a young man's declining or postponing the purchase of a farm merely because he is not able to buy a great one. Twenty acres of arable soil near a city or manufacturing village, forty acres in a rural district of any old State, or eighty acres in a region just beginning to be peopled by White men, is an ample area for any one who is worth less than $2,000. If he understands his business, he will find profitable employment hereon for every working hour: if he does not understand farming, he will buy his experience dear enough on this, yet more cheaply than he would on a wider area. Until he shall have more money than he needs, let him beware of buying more land than he absolutely wants.
V.
BUYING A FARM
No one need be told at this day that good land is cheaper than poor – that the former may be bought at less cost than it can be made. Yet this, like most truths, may be given undue emphasis. It should be considered in the light of the less obvious truth that Every farmer may make advantageous use of SOME poor land. The smallest farm should have its strip or belt of forest; the larger should have an abundance and variety of trees; and sterile, stony land grows many if not most trees thriftily: Even at the risk of arousing Western prejudice, I maintain that New-England, and all broken, hilly, rocky countries, have a decided advantage (abundantly counterbalanced, no doubt) over regions of great fertility and nearly uniform facility, in that human stupidity and mole-eyed greed can never wholly divest them of forests – that their sterile crags and steep acclivities must mainly be left to wood forever. Avarice may strip them of their covering of to-day; but, defying the plow and the spade, they cannot be so denuded that they will not be speedily reclothed with trees and foliage.
I am not a believer that "Five Acres" or "Ten Acres" suffice for a farm. I know where money is made on even fewer than five acres; but they who do it are few, and men of exceptional capacity and diligence. Their achievements are necessarily confined to the vicinage of cities or manufacturing villages. The great majority of all who live by Agriculture want room to turn upon – want to grow grass and keep stock – and, for such, no mere garden or potato-patch will answer. They want genuine farms.
Yet, go where you may in this country, you will hear a farmer saying of his neighbor, "He has too much land," even where the criticism might justly be reciprocated. We cannot all be mistaken on this head.
There are men who can each manage thousands of acres of tillage, just as there are those who can skillfully wield an army of a hundred thousand men. Napoleon said there were two of this class in the Europe of his day. There are others who cannot handle a hundred acres so that nothing is lost through neglect or oversight. Rules must be adapted to average capacities and circumstances. He who expects to live by cattle-rearing needs many more acres than he who is intent on grain-growing; while he who contemplates vegetable, root, and fruit culture, needs fewer acres still. As to the direction of his efforts, each one will be a law unto himself.
If I were asked, by a young man intent on farming, to indicate the proper area for him, I would say, Buy just so large a farm as half your means will pay for. In other words, "If you are worth $20,000, invest half of it in land, the residue in stock, tools, etc.; and observe the same rule of proportion, whether you be worth $1,000,000 or only $1,000. If you are worth just nothing at all, I would invest in land the half of that, and no more. In other words, I would either wait to earn $500 or over, or push Westward till I found land that costs practically nothing."
This, then, I take to be the gist of the popular criticism on our farmers as having unduly enlarged their borders: They have more land than they have capital to stock and till to the best advantage. He who has but fifty acre has too much if he lets part of his land lie idle and unproductive for lack of team or hands to till it efficiently; while he who has a thousand acres has none too much if he has the means and talents wherewith to make the best of it all.
I have said that I consider the soil of New England as cheap, all things considered, for him who is able to buy and work it, as that of Minnesota or Arkansas – that I urge migration to the West only upon those who cannot pay for farms in the old States. I doubt whether the farmers of any other section have, in the average, done better, throughout the last ten years, than the butter-makers of Vermont, the cheese-dairymen of this State. And yet there is, in the ridgy, rocky, patchy character of most of our Eastern farms, an insuperable barrier to the most economic, effective cultivation. If the ridges were further apart – if each rocky or gravelly knoll were not in close proximity to a strip of bog or morass – it would be different. But the genius of our age points unmistakably to cultivation by steam or some other mechanical application of power; and this requires spacious fields, with few or no obstacles to the equable progress of the plow. I apprehend that, for this reason, the growth of bread-corn eastward of the Hudson can never more be considerably extended, so long as the boundless, fertile prairies can so easily pour their exhaustless supplies upon us. Fruits, Vegetables, Roots and Grass, we must continue to grow, probably in ever-increasing abundance; but we of the East will buy our bread-corn largely if not mainly from the West.
He, therefore, who bays land in the Eastern States should regard primarily its capacity to produce those crops in which the East can never be supplanted – Grass, Fruits, Vegetables, Timber. If a farm will also produce good Corn or Wheat, that is a recommendation; but let him place a higher value on those capacities which will be more generally required and drawn upon.
In the West, the case is different; for, though Wheat-culture still recedes before the footsteps of advancing population, and Minnesota may soon cease to grow for others, as Western New-York, Ohio, Indiana, and Northern Illinois, have already done, yet Indian Corn, being the basis of both Beef and Pork, will long hold its own in the Valley of the Ohio and in that of the Upper Mississippi. As it recedes slowly Westward, Clover and Timothy, Butter and Cheese, will press closely on its footsteps.
Good neighbors, good roads, good schools, good mechanics at hand, and a good church within reach, will always be valued and sought: few farmers are likely to disregard them. Let whoever buys a farm whereon to live, resolve to buy once for all, and let him not forget that health is not only wealth but happiness – that an eligible location and a beautiful prospect are elements of enjoyment not only for ourselves but our friends; let him not fancy that all the land will soon be gobbled up and held at exorbitant prices, but believe that money will almost always command money's worth of whatever may be needed, so that he need not embarrass himself to-day through fear that he may not be able to find sellers to-morrow, and he can hardly fail to buy judiciously, and thus escape that worst species of home-sickness – sickness of home.