Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money We Made by ItCoulton, Miss
History
Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money We Made by It
Coulton, Miss
Agriculture; Farm life
We always found that the deeper the sets were placed in the ground the
sounder were the roots: We tried every experiment with them; and as
our gardener was both skilful and industrious, we were usually much
more fortunate with our produce than our neighbors.
Carrots rank to the "small farmer" next in value to the potatoes; not
only pigs and cows are fond of them, but likewise horses. The pony
always improved in condition when he was allowed to have a few daily.
Our arable acre was a model farm on a very small scale. We grow in it
maize for the poultry, tares for the pigeons, lucerne for the cows,
and talked of oats for the pony. This our gardener objected to, so the
surplus bit of ground was sown with parsnips, which turned out very
profitable, as both pigs and cows liked them.
We have told the reader that we reared the calf of the Strawberry cow,
and it cost us hardly anything to do so, for it was fed in the winter
with the roots we had to spare. The first winter it had to consume the
greater part of the ton of mangel-wurzel we had bought "to keep our
cows together." Some we had boiled with potatoes for the pigs, and
they liked it very well.
An acre of land may appear a laughably small piece of ground to
produce such a variety of articles, but if well attended to the yield
will astonish those who are ignorant of gardening. The one important
thing to be attended to is, to see that all seed-crops are well
thinned out as soon as they are an inch above the surface. In very few
kitchen-gardens is this attended to, and for want of this care a dozen
carrots, parsnips, or turnips, are allowed to stand where one would be
sufficient. The one would prove a fine root; the dozen are not worth
the trouble of pulling, as they can get neither air nor room to grow.
To be well done they should be thinned by hand, and that being a
tedious "job," gardeners seldom can be induced to perform the work
properly.
As our ground became productive we added another cow, and more pigs
and poultry, but I shall not now say with what success. This little
book in only intended for the novice in farming, and details only the
results of the first six months of our "farm of four acres."
Perhaps I should have called it _five_ acres, as nearly the whole of
the acre of kitchen-garden was devoted to the cultivation of food for
our "stock."
We had a very broad sunny border at the back of the flower-garden,
which grew nearly all the spring and summer vegetables we required:
such as seakale, early potatoes, peas cauliflowers, and salads.
We have not yet said anything of the money we saved by our
kitchen-garden, but we must add to the profits of our six months'
farming the average amount we should have paid to a green-grocer for
fruit and vegetables.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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