New lives for old

From the moment my seeds began to show in tiny sprouts above the ground until the full grown produce was safely garnered, I lived with a hoe in my hands. Much to Hadley’s disgust I also kept a hoe in his hands most of the time. I didn’t allow a weed either in my truck garden or my potato patch ever to get more than two inches high. Instead of hoeing once I hoed a half dozen times. The advantage of this is not so much in keeping down the weeds as it is in stirring up the soil so that the earth keeps fresh and alive and porous. Hadley was disgusted.

“Lawd-a-mighty,” he exclaimed, as we started for the potato patch with hoes over our shoulders for the fourth cultivation, “ye’ll hoe your stuff to death.”

“You wait and see the results,” I said.

“Ye b’lieve every darn thing them school teachers tell ye?”

“Pretty nearly,” I said.

“It’s all right for them to preach,” he said, “but I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut thet they’d quit preachin’ hoein’ mighty quick if ye gave them this five-acre patch to hoe theirselves.”

But I was satisfied with results at the end of the first month. No one could ask for hardier looking plants than I had. But Hadley was not convinced even with this visible proof.

“They’ve grown spite of ye,” he said. “Anyhow the tarnation bugs will eat ’em up afore you’re through. Always do.”

Doubtless they would if I had given my permission, but when I wasn’t hoeing I was spraying with Paris Green. More than this I went around with a tin can and knocked off into this all those bugs which did succeed in reaching maturity. A couple of sprayings a season was the most anyone around here ever did. So long as the bugs were kept down enough not actually to kill the plants most people hereabout were satisfied. I don’t believe an even hundred of the pests succeeded in getting a square meal off my potatoes.

Now in all this I insist, and it’s evident on the face of it, that such attention didn’t imply on my part any scientific knowledge of farming. I did what I was told to do and did it thoroughly. I did what it seems to me I should have known enough to do even if I hadn’t been told. You can’t eat your cake and have it, too; you can’t let bugs eat your potatoes and have your potatoes, too. It was queer sort of reasoning that until now had convinced my neighbors that this was possible. They had almost fatalistic theories about farming. They seemed to think that the most any man could do was to plant his seed and then trust to Providence for what might result. This pious faith in the bounty of the Almighty was fundamentally of course merely an unconscious excuse for their own laziness, but it seems to me it really must have been at the root of their shiftlessness—an inheritance perhaps. Hadley was a fine example of it. I gave up early in the season trying to inspire him even with the help of the prizes. He did plant a few hills of corn but he refused to hoe them more than once.

Now what I did myself, a large part of my neighbors were also doing in a more or less earnest way. The young men I found were doing more than the old men. The latter had taken advice in the matter of fertilizers and seeds but it came hard to them to give the later attention to their crops that I did. However, it was possible to see a general and notable improvement even in this. The semi-monthly meetings did much to spur them on and the noticeable results which followed their efforts also did something more. Some of them remained skeptical, but both Holt and myself insisted that they must keep at it until the end of the season. We never missed a chance to dangle before their eyes the prize money. Holt did one clever thing that had a very good effect. He secured one hundred crisp new dollar bills and kept them displayed in the window of Moulton’s grocery store with a sign over them which read:

“Only One of the Ten Prizes.”

The display of so much money caught the eye of everyone who passed. More than that about everyone in town who was competing went down and had a look at it every so often. It acted like a tonic to many a man who was getting disheartened by the amount of labor involved in the new system.

Holt and I made a rough estimate of the land now under cultivation that last year was idle and figured that it amounted to about one hundred and eighty acres. In addition to this there was of course the land that was always farmed to a more or less extent amounting to some two hundred acres more. Out of this last lot there wasn’t an acre that didn’t show improvement over the year before.

The new hundred and eighty acres counted for a lot more in value than shows in the mere statement, because it included gardens for nearly everyone in the village and this meant an actual saving in cash for every householder from the moment the produce began to mature. Moulton noted the effect of this when as usual he started to bring in early vegetables from the city market. He had all he could do to get rid of the first lot and after that gave it up. No one wanted city vegetables with the prospect ahead of vegetables of their own. Martin, the local butcher, also noticed the effect in a way he didn’t like. He was the only man in the village who opposed us and he can’t be blamed, for his meat sales began to fall off in June and dropped fifty per cent. during July and August. With green peas to be had for the picking, followed by string beans, new potatoes, green corn, turnips, parsnips, beets, shell beans and what not, most people thought twice before paying him forty cents a pound for rump steak. Personally I’d like to have seen him put out of business, for he was a robber if ever there was one. He had set me to wondering a long while before this why it wasn’t possible for us to raise our own meat. With plenty of corn and hay upon which to feed our cattle, with grazing ground for sheep, with practically everyone able to keep his own pig on ordinary waste I didn’t see any reason why in the end we shouldn’t make use of this opportunity. Our forefathers raised whatever meat they needed and I believed we could do it to-day. This was one of the things I resolved to bring up at one of the fall meetings.

But when crops began to mature we were confronted with another and more urgent problem. Just as soon as the green peas began to come along we realized that we were face to face with the problem of distribution. We had killed the local market, which was decidedly a good thing. In one sense we hadn’t killed it, for now every man was supplying himself, but we had killed it for our surplus. It didn’t take me long to see that this would be wasted, for all that a majority of the individuals themselves might do. The farmers were helpless partly because they had no selling knowledge and partly because it was almost impossible for them to get produce to the market and sell at a profit in small lots. Holt and I made a round of the commission merchants in town and the very best we could do with any of them was at a price forty per cent. below retail. We figured that transportation would eat up another ten per cent. which left the man who raised the crop some fifty per cent. This was dead wrong on the face of it, but we didn’t have any time to argue the point and it wouldn’t have done us any good if we had. As we were now situated, fifty per cent. was better than nothing. However, this opened my eyes to some of the reasons why in the suburbs we couldn’t make both ends meet.

I called a special meeting of the club and told the members what I had learned and outlined the plan Holt and I had devised to save what we could. The situation had come unexpectedly and was due of course to our ignorance. We didn’t realize it at the time but as it happened this crisis was the best thing that could have come about. It forced us on the spur of the moment and at the psychological moment into a plan that promised to develop big things in the end; the coöperative selling plan. I proposed that every member of the club should gather early each morning such things as were fit for the market over what he couldn’t use himself and bring them to my barn. There the produce would be measured and sorted and each man given a credit slip. A committee of three was to be appointed by the club to oversee without pay this work for a week. The committee would hire a team to transport the goods to the early train which left at five fifteen. At the end of each week an accounting would be made, the cost of transportation deducted and profits distributed pro rata. I offered to look after the bookkeeping myself if the club so desired and at the next meeting this task was delegated to me.

Now it is possible that in advance of the present urgent situation which demanded that they accept this or nothing, a minority at least might have viewed this scheme with suspicion. They were not used to doing things in a body and the novelty of it, like all novelties, might have frightened them. As it was, the plan was received with instant enthusiasm and when put to a vote carried without a single dissenting voice. Anyway if a man disapproved all he had to do was not to bring in his produce. The action of the club didn’t bind a man to anything except to abide by results if he chose to contribute his stuff.

We appointed three men to appear at my barn at four o’clock the next morning. They turned up on time and by four-fifteen the produce began to arrive. Everyone brought what he had, whether it was a bushel of sweet corn, a peck of beans, a dozen heads of lettuce, a half dozen cucumbers or a barrel of apples or potatoes. In most cases the individual lots didn’t amount to much but collectively we made a good showing that first morning. We had enough to fill a two horse load. I went to the station and supervised the loading myself and then went on to the market with it. Barnes, the commission man, looked it over and admitted that he was well pleased on his part with the venture. At the end of the first week I received a check for four hundred and eighty-three dollars and sixty-five cents—not in itself a large amount or as much as it should have been, but when considered as money, a large per cent. of which would otherwise have gone to waste, a creditable showing.

And really the working out of the scheme as it continued from week to week was wonderfully simple. There was nothing either difficult or complicated about it. The three men appointed every week gave about two hours of their time for six days which in no way interfered with their farm duties. They all looked upon their selection as an honor and rather enjoyed their position.

Nor was my part of it burdensome. I received an itemized accounting from Barnes and had nothing to do but divide these items as the dated credit slips were produced. I didn’t even have to do that, for Ruth did the figuring herself. Before the end of the season we found we had handled thirty-eight hundred dollars, but this included the apple and potato crop which went through us. And there wasn’t a single kick or complaint heard during the whole business.

In the meantime, as the end of the season approached, the matter of the prize distribution loomed big. I wanted to make the most of that event. I wanted it to be a big spectacular finish that would cling in the minds of all during the ensuing winter. The committee held several meetings to discuss the best way of doing this and we finally hit upon the idea of an old-time country fair. There hadn’t been one in town for twenty years because the last ones held had degenerated into nothing but two-cent horse races in which the prizes had all been carried off by semi-professionals. The chief objection to the plan was the lack of fair grounds. The old society had gone into bankruptcy and sold off what property it had and the grounds had since then grown up to scrub pine. Ruth solved the difficulty by suggesting that we go back again to the early days for our idea. Originally the fairs were held on the village green. In fact, in parts of New England they still are to-day. Her idea was to revive this custom in our town.

The idea had several advantages, not the least of which was that it incurred no expense, and met with instant approval. We appointed a committee to look after the details, a second committee to arrange a field day for the youngsters, and a third committee with Ruth at its head to arrange some sort of entertainment for the women.

“You mustn’t leave them out,” Ruth insisted. “They play a more important part in this work than you imagine.”

We had arranged with the Agricultural School to send down men to act as judges so that everything should be judged impartially. A man had come down just before the haying season and had overseen the weighing on the town scales of all hay entered for the competition. Quality and quantity were the two things taken into account for the best crop on land already used for that purpose, while the prize for the best crop on reclaimed land required a somewhat nicer judgment. The nature of the land here had to be considered. When the expert had completed his work he made his report and placed it in a sealed envelope which was not to be opened until the public award.

This same method was used in making the awards for the most notable improvement in orchards, for the best corn crop and the best potato crop. As for the other prizes the committee itself acted as judges. The results here were a matter of self-evident facts. In the live stock competition each man was required to show a receipted bill for all money expended and a record of some sort for all money received. The garden competition had to be judged in a more general way, as it was observed by the committee during the entire season. I had put a good deal of time into this myself and it had been a genuine pleasure. There was hardly a family in the village who didn’t have a garden of some sort that year, for even those who didn’t intend to compete caught the contagion and planted something. I wish there had been some way of computing the saving in cash that resulted from this alone. It certainly amounted to a good many times the money which had inspired the movement. It seems almost impossible of belief that to many residents of this country village the raising of their own green stuff was a decided novelty. But such is the fact. With a man coming daily to the door, as until this season Tony and others had done, with peas, lettuce, corn, cucumbers and what not, people had bought of him as a matter of convenience. It had cost them only a little at a time and they hadn’t realized to how much the sum total amounted.

I know that Ruth and I found a big difference in our household expenses once the garden began to bear. Not only this but we did away with meat almost entirely and never lived so well in our lives. In addition to what I used myself I loaded down Dick’s machine every morning with such stuff as couldn’t be put away for winter use, to be distributed among members of the gang—among families with children or those temporarily in hard luck through sickness. Moulton was certainly mistaken when he had prophesied that it would cost me more to raise than buy my own vegetables. But he hadn’t planned on any such modern methods as I and the whole village used that season.

As the day for the fair grew nearer the town became on edge with excitement. Here was a holiday which appealed to everyone, whether farmer or not. It brought the whole village together as a unit. I was surprised to find how much local spirit really existed below all the apparent indifference. I found there wasn’t a man or woman who didn’t have some town pride, however slight. The trouble was that they seldom had an opportunity to express it. Holt kept up a running fire of comment in the local paper, which was glad to give us all the space we wished. It made the most readable and inexpensive copy they had received for a long time. We also got out posters and distributed them among the neighboring towns, bidding everyone come as guests of the village. Every merchant decorated his store a week in advance and the Woodmen band in anticipation of the event practiced new pieces every night.

Ruth secured the town hall for the women and arranged there for an exhibition of New England cooking, preserving and needle work, which instantly gave the women an active interest in the undertaking. She also arranged to serve here a free lunch of coffee, sandwiches and cakes to out-of-town visitors. Her committee decorated the interior of the old building with wild flowers and flowers from the home gardens, with a background of evergreens gathered by the small boys.

We received requests for street privileges from a number of fakirs and sold these for enough to purchase settees to go around the band stand. We used some care, however, in giving out our permits and barred all gambles of whatever kind. About a dozen came into town the day before and erected their booths which gave the village still more of a holiday aspect. That night there wasn’t a livelier village in the State. It was so full of anticipation that I don’t believe more than half the population got their full night’s sleep for the first time in twenty years.

“Are we dead yet?” demanded Holt of Ruth as he prepared to leave us long after midnight and after being up since four A. M.

“Some of you will be if you don’t go right home this minute and get some sleep,” she answered.