Success With Small Fruits | Page 5

a stroll in the fields, or a tour among the fruit farms, and while sorry to lose their company, I have no occasion to find fault.
I assure those, however, who, after this preliminary parley, decide to go further, that I will do my best to make our excursion pleasant, and to cause as little weariness as is possible, if we are to return with full baskets. I shall not follow the example of some thrifty people who invite one to go "a-berrying," but lead away from fruitful nooks, proposing to visit them alone by stealth. All the secrets I know shall become open ones. I shall conduct the reader to all the "good places," and name the good things I have discovered in half a lifetime of research. I would, therefore, modestly hint to the practical reader-- to whom "time is money," who has an eye to the fruit only, and with whom the question of outlay and return is ever uppermost--that he may, after all, find it to his advantage to go with us. While we stop to gather a flower, listen to a brook or bird, or go out of our way occasionally to get a view, he can jog on, meeting us at every point where we "mean business." These points shall occur so often that he will not lose as much time as he imagines, and I think he will find my business talks business-like--quite as practical as he desires.
To come down to the plainest of plain prose, I am not a theorist on these subjects, nor do I dabble in small fruits as a rich and fanciful amateur, to whom it is a matter of indifference whether his strawberries cost five cents or a dollar a quart. As a farmer, milk must be less expensive than champagne. I could not afford a fruit farm at all if it did not more than pay its way, and in order to win the confidence of the "solid men," who want no "gush" or side sentiment, even though nature suggests some warrant for it, I will give a bit of personal experience. Five years since, I bought a farm of twenty-three acres that for several years had. been rented, depleted, and suffered to run wild. Thickets of brushwood extended from the fences well into the fields, and in a notable instance across the entire place. One portion was so stony that it could not be plowed; another so wet and sour that even grass would not grow upon it; a third portion was not only swampy, but liable to be overwhelmed with stones and gravel twice a year by the sudden rising of a mountain stream. There was no fruit on the place except apples and a very few pears and grapes. Nearly all of the land, as I found it, was too impoverished to produce a decent crop of strawberries. The location of the place, moreover, made it very expensive--it cost $19,000; and yet during the third year of occupancy the income from this place approached very nearly to the outlay, and in 1878, during which my most expensive improvements were made, in the way of draining, taking out stones, etc., the income paid for these improvements, for current expenses, and gave a surplus of over $1,800. In 1879, the net income was considerably larger. In order that these statements may not mislead any one, I will add that in my judgment only the combined business of plants and fruit would warrant such expenses as I have incurred. My farm is almost in the midst of a village, and the buildings upon it greatly increased its cost. Those who propose to raise and sell fruit only should not burden themselves with high-priced land. Farms, even on the Hudson, can be bought at quite moderate prices at a mile or more away from centres, and yet within easy reach of landings and railroad depots.
Mr. Charles Downing, whose opinions on all horticultural questions are so justly valued, remarked to me that no other fruit was so affected by varying soils and climates as the strawberry. I have come to the conclusion that soil, locality, and climate make such vast differences that unless these variations are carefully studied and indicated, books will mislead more people than they help. A man may write a treatise admirably adapted to his own farm; but if one living a thousand, a hundred, or even one mile away, followed the same method, he might almost utterly fail. While certain general and foundation principles apply to the cultivation of each genus of fruit, important modifications and, in some instances, almost radical changes of method must be made in view of the varied conditions in which it is grown.
It is even more important to know what varieties