If other fungi than the Campestris come up wild, don't throw them
away as worthless. Many are better eating than the one you seek, and
you can avoid the risk of poisonous ones by learning to recognize
the dangerous family--send for the Agricultural Department's
Bulletin No. 204. Meanwhile, (1) all mushrooms with pink gills, (2)
all coral-like fungi, (3) all that grow on wood, and (4) all
puffballs, are good to eat if they are young and tender--only don't
mistake an unspread Aminita for a puffball.
An ingenious person may find other sources of income in the country.
A young hotel porter in Ulster County, New York, bought seventy
acres of mountain woodland four miles from the railroad for two
hundred and fifty dollars, and puts in his winters cutting barrel
hoops, at which he makes two dollars a day. Meanwhile the land is
maturing timber. That is hard work, but to gather wild mushrooms or
to cut willows, or sweet pine needles to make cushions, or to catch
young squirrels for sale, is lighter, if less steady employment.
And with all our uses of land, we must not forget a little corner
for the hammock and the croquet hoops for the wife and the children.
In the Province of Quebec, where the land is held in great tracts
under the Seigniors, I have seen croquet grounds no bigger than a
bed quilt in front of the little one-room cottages.
The Frenchman knows the importance of such things as that, has meals
out of doors in fine weather, goes on little picnics, and keeps
madame contented in the country.
A swing, or a seesaw, and a tether ball (a ball swinging from the
top of a pole eight feet high) for the children will help to keep
the family peace.
CHAPTER XIII
FRUITS
Fruit raising can succeed in either of two ways. Either planting the
orchard in some one fruit and specializing thereon, or diversifying
the operation to cover many varieties. In the first way it is usual
to establish orchards in favorable localities without special regard
to nearness to market; because in these days of refrigerator car
lines the product of an orchard in any part of the country can be
sent to market quickly enough to avoid loss. Where many varieties
are grown, the best site is usually near a large city where the
grower can market his own product on wagons and get the benefit of
retail prices.
Remember that it is far more profitable to raise twenty baskets of
fine, well-shaped, clean, handsome apples or peaches or any other
hand-eaten fruit, than to raise a hundred barrels of stuff that is
good only for the common drier or for the mill or hogpen.
Care and common sense are the jackscrews to use in raising fine
fruit.
The apple is the great American fruit for extensive orcharding. The
question is whether there is a profit in apple growing. The answer
is, where the conditions are favorable and when the business is well
conducted there is. Under average conditions, with poor business
management, there is little or none.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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